From the author’s personal encounters with Georges Dumézil, this book offers a portrait of a man who, along with Claude Lévi-Strauss, was the greatest French mythologist of the twentieth century.

From 1938 onwards, Georges Dumézil develops a new approach to Indo-European myths and highlights an ideology which, according to him, constitutes the foundation of all the great political regimes from India to France, from Antiquity to the present day.

This ideology is based on three hierarchical functions: magical and legal sovereignty, prowess in warfare, fertilityand prosperity, three pillars that have supported empires, monarchies and totalitarianisms for thousands of years.

Although the work of Dumézil is substantial, it has often been neglected or even distorted, an oversight that this book by a doctor of philosophy seeks to put right. Through Dumézil’s words it both shapes a better understanding of the world today, through the Indo-European imagination, and provides a weapon against totalitarianisms and their political myths.