Abstract
In Hesiod's Theogony , the expression "hiera erdein", "to make sacred portions", appears only once, in the introduction to the long passage that moderns have taken to calling the "hymn to Hecate". The forty or so verses (411-452) devoted to this goddess interrupt the genealogy of the children of Ouranos and Gaia, and their offspring. The long digression on the honors bestowed on Hecate by Zeus - who had not yet been born at this stage of the theogony - now forms an anticipation in which a whole series of human activities are described, under the gaze of the gods and of Hecate in particular. The passage is saturated with two types of lexical field: that of the honors conferred on the goddess by Zeus and the gods of all spheres of the cosmos, and that of her goodwill in the divine attention to human activities. These two dimensions are studied and attest that it is decidedly among men that the timē of the gods finds activation, through sacrificial contact. The said "hymn to Hecate" also strongly underlines the coefficient of uncertainty that encumbers human life, suspended on what the gods have in store for them.
Immediately after this "hymn", the story opens with the descendants of Kronos and Rhea, with the birth of Zeus and its vicissitudes, followed by the son's victory over the father, anticipating the episode of the Titanomachy and his conquest of sovereignty over the cosmos. But before moving on to the battle against the Titans, the poet closes the enumeration of the children born of this generation with the descendants of Japet and Klymenè, including the figure of Prometheus. Once again, a long passage suspends the genealogical thread of the plot to describe the conflict between the respective wills of Prometheus and Zeus, which will lead to the definition of the status of humans. Gathered at Mékonè around a great ox that has been butchered, men and gods go their separate ways. This analysis takes up the first elements of the "Promethean crisis", one of whose components is the introduction of sacrifice.
