Iapetus

Iapetus was one of the elder Titans, sons of Uranus (Heaven) and Gaea (Earth). Led by Cronus, Iapetus and his brothers ambushed their father as he descended to lie with Mother Earth. Crios, Coeus, Hyperion and Iapetus were posted at the four corners of the world where they seized hold of the Sky-God and held him fast, while Cronos castrated him with a sickle. The Titans were later deposed by Zeus and cast into the pit of Tartarus. According to Pindar and Aeschylus (in his lost play Prometheus Unbound) the Titans were eventually released from the pit through the clemency of Zeus.

Iapetus and his three brothers probably represent the four pillars of the cosmos which are described in Near-Eastern cosmogonies holding heaven and earth apart. Iapetus himself would have been the pillar of the west, a position later held by his son Atlas. When the Titans were later cast into the pit of Tartarus - which Hesiod describes as a void beneath the foundations of the cosmos, where earth, sea and sky all have their roots - their cosmological role shifts from being supports of heaven to bearers of the entire cosmos.

Iapetus "the piercer" was probably also the Titan god symbolizing mortality and the mortal life-span as his sons Prometheus and Epimetheus were the creators of mankind and all other mortal creatures.