Who was Pandora’s father-in-law in Hesiod’s myth?

In Hesiod’s myth, Iapetus is Pandora’s father-in-law. Pandora marries Epimetheus, and Epimetheus is the son of the Titan Iapetus and the Oceanid Clymene in Hesiod’s genealogical tradition.

Iapetus is one of the Titans, the divine generation that ruled before Zeus and the Olympian gods. His sons include Prometheus, Epimetheus, Atlas, and Menoetius. This makes Pandora connected by marriage to a family central to the myth of humanity’s origins and the theft of fire.

The relationship is easy to miss because popular versions focus on Pandora and Epimetheus rather than on their genealogy. It also differs from the question of who created Pandora: Hesiod says Hephaestus fashioned her, while Iapetus belongs to Epimetheus’s ancestry.

Greek myth has several overlapping genealogies, and later authors sometimes vary the names of mothers or spouses. Iapetus’s role as the father of Epimetheus, however, is the key relationship needed to identify him as Pandora’s father-in-law in Hesiod’s account.