Domain: Mortality and craftsmanship; the mortal life-span Symbol: The western pillar of the sky, the piercing spear, the thread of a mortal life Roman Equivalent: Iapetus
Overview
Iapetus is the Titan of mortal life and of craft — reckoned the father of the human condition itself through his famous sons, and named by some as the Titan of mortality, the finite life-span, or of violent, impetuous force. Son of Gaia and Uranus, he is the fourth of the great Titan brothers who set the pillars of the sky, holding the western quarter where the light goes down. He married Clymene, a daughter of Oceanus, and from that union came four sons whose fates map the whole range of the human lot — foresight and afterthought, endurance and ruin.
Through those sons Iapetus stands closer to humankind than any other Titan. It was his line, not the Olympians', that shaped and championed mortal men: his son Prometheus made humanity and stole fire for it, and his other sons bore the sky, ruined themselves by rashness, and were struck down for their pride. The Greeks sometimes called Iapetus the very ancestor of the human race. He is the Titan at the twilight edge of the divine world, the father of the mortal story.
Key Myths
Father of the four fates of man. By Clymene, Iapetus fathered Prometheus the forethinker, who made and saved mankind; Epimetheus the afterthinker, who took Pandora and loosed the world's ills; Atlas, condemned to bear the sky; and Menoetius, the violent one, whom Zeus blasted with a thunderbolt into Erebus for his rash arrogance. In his four sons the whole spectrum of the mortal condition is laid out — foresight and folly, endurance and overreach — so that Iapetus is remembered as the father of the human predicament itself.
The western pillar. Iapetus held the sky apart from the earth at the western quarter, one of the four Titan brothers — with Hyperion, Coeus, and Crius — who fixed the pillars of heaven. His is the west, the place of setting light, the twilight edge fitting for the Titan whose line is bound up with mortality and the going-down of things.
The Titan of the mortal span. Some ancient writers made Iapetus the personification of mortal life itself and of the violent impetuosity that shortens it — the Titan of the finite, the counterpart among the elder gods to the deathless Olympians. His name became a byword for extreme antiquity; to call a man "older than Iapetus" was to say he was as old as the world. He fell with the Titans and was bound in Tartarus, the father of mortals cast beneath the earth.
Related
- Prometheus — His son, who made mankind and stole fire for it
- Atlas — His son, condemned to hold up the sky
- Oceanus — Father of his wife Clymene
- Hyperion — His brother, the eastern pillar of the sky
- Coeus — His brother, the northern axis of heaven
- Crius — His brother, the southern pillar
- Gaia — His mother, the earth
- Uranus — His father, the sky
- Mythology
- Greek Mythology Index