Iapetus
In Greek mythology, Iapetus (in ancient Greek Ίαπετός Iapetós), was a Titan son of Uranus and Gaia, but at least in one source he is described only as son of Gaea. He was the father of Atlas, Prometheus (through whom he would be ancestor of the human race), Epimetheus, and Menoetius, whom Zeus would defeat in the Titanomachy. His descendants are often called by the patronymic forms Japetidas or Japetónidas.
His connection with the lineages of mortal men is evident in Pindar, who tells us about the "sons of the daughters of the race of Iapetus", in relation to Pyrrha, daughter of Epimetheus, and all the lineages of women who descend from her; these engendered the heroes of mythology sleeping with the gods. A myth makes Themis the mother of Prometheus as well instead of Clymene. With Themis he was the father of Eurymedon who confused him with the giant. With Climene he is also the father of Anchiale. With Tornax he was the father of Búfago
Myth
According to Apollodorus, the wife of Iapetus was an Oceanid (daughter of Oceanus and Tethys) named Asia, although other sources state that the Oceanid was called Clymene, and even others pair it with Tethys, Asopis, or Libya.
Hyginus, who confuses the Titans and the Giants, made Iapetus one of these, and called him the son of Tartarus and the Earth. Homer mentions in the Iliad that he was imprisoned with Cronus in Tartarus and Silio Itálico tells that he was buried under the island of Inarime.
In Hesiod's Works and Days Prometheus is referred to as "son of Iapetus", and his mother is not named. In Aeschylus's work Prometheus in Chains (Προμηθεύς δεσμώτης), Prometheus is the son of the goddess Themis (although the same author says that Themis and Gaia are the same identity), and although his father is not named, Atlas at least continues to appear as his brother.
However, in his Odes Horace describes how 'the bold descendant of Iapetus [Prometheus] / gave fire to men by wicked deceit' (audax Iapeti genus / ignem mala gentibus intulit fraud). Since most of the Titans consented to sibling marriage, it could be that Aeschylus was using an old tradition in which Themis was the wife of Iapetus and that the Hesiodic tradition preferred both Themis and Mnemosyne to be consorts only to Zeus. However, it is still quite common in Achaean customs that Zeus would have taken the wives of the Titans as lovers after defeating their husbands.
Pausanias wrote about another character named Iapetus:
As I have already told, the limit between Megalopolis and Herea is at the birth of the Bufago River. The river took its name, they say, from a hero named Bufago, son of Jepeto and Tornax. That's what they call it in Laconia too. They also say that Artemisa shot Bufago on Mount Foloe because he tried to commit a sacred sin against his divinity.
The Bufago is a tributary of the Alphaeus, Tornax is a mountain between Sparta and Sellasia, and the Pholoe are mountains between Arcadia and Elis.
Stephen of Byzantium quotes Athenodorus of Tarsus:
Anchiale, daughter of Jápeto, founded Anchiale (a city near Tarsus): his son was Cidno, who gave his name to the river of Tarsus: the son of Cydno was Partenio, by whom the city was called Partenia; later the name was changed to Tarsus.
This could be the same Anchiale that appears in the Argonautics:
And near they piled up an altar of small stones, and crowned their foreheads with oak leaves and proceeded to the sacrifice, invoking Mother Dindima, the Most Venerable, Moradora de Frigia, Ticia and Cyleno, who alone among many of those who are called judges of the destiny and caregivers of Mother Idea (from the Gides of Crete), to whom both hands of Ambaal
Iapetus and Japheth
Creationists (such as John Milton) sometimes equate Iapetus with Japheth, the son of Noah, because of the similarity between the two names and because their myths coincide, although researchers in Indo-European linguistics vehemently dispute such equating. According to Robert Graves:
The identification of Atlantis with Faros would explain why Atlas is sometimes described as the son of Jápeto and other times as the son of Poseidon, patron of the Greek navigators. Noah is Deucalion (who survived the universal flood) and although in the Greek myth Jápeto appears as the grandfather of Deucalion, this could mean, simply, that he was the eponymous ancestor of the Canaanite tribe who brought to Greece the Mesopotamian legend of the Flood (rather than the Atlantic legend).
The Sibylline Oracles make Iapetus one of the three children of Gaea and Uranus, along with Cronus and Titan, each receiving a third of the Earth. Similar legends in Judeo-Christian writings attribute this division into thirds to Noah's three sons: Ham, Shem, and Japheth.