Abstract
Jacques Duchesne-Guillemin's etymological reflections on the Greek hieros and the Sanskrit iṣirá make it possible to circumscribe a semantic field where notions of power, vigor and sacredness intersect in the sense of a " certain relationship to the gods ", to use the title of the previous lesson. The analysis of epic occurrences of the adjective hieros in the world of the gods is thus enriched : its use in the divine sphere, as illustrated by the verses of Homer and above all Hesiod, attests that each time it is used to describe either the crucible of a deity's power (the womb of Rhea, the head of Zeus), or its vector (the bed, the flame, the scales), or the spectacle of power expressed by the multiplicity of the gods themselves (their genos). While hieros is particularly concerned with the expression of divine vitality and the manifestation of power it induces in the world of the gods, certain connotations of the adjective, applied to the world of men, offer a parallel in minor mode by focusing, as we have seen, on Demeter's wheat and the course of rivers, but also on the cosmic cycles that frame human existence. An incursion into the poetry of Pindar supports the analysis of hieros as an index of vital flourishing supported by the gods.
