This online platform, first launched in 2017 and evolutive, is a new and significant resource for information and research on religious life in ancient Greece. As to Greek inscriptions mentioning ritual norms, let alone more ancient collections, scholars had for half a century taken advantage of F. Sokolowski's three collections published in paper: Lois sacrées de l'Asie mineure (1955), Lois sacrées des cités grecques. Supplément (1962) and Lois sacrées des cités grecques (1969), to which E. Lupu added Greek Sacred Law. A Collection of New Documents (2005; 2nd edition 2009). The new project was developed from 2004 at the University of Liège, where all three authors were working at the time. After Pirenne-Delforge's appointment at the Collège de France in Paris, further support was added by this institution. A larger team of less permanent collaborators took part in the achievement. Beside implementing and updating the former collections, the new project offers two important changes, both epistemological and structural.

From an epistemological point of view, the authors’ first duty was to define more precisely their field of research. Preliminary discussions and workshops resulted in a series of papers, which are mentioned and accessible through a link from the homepage of the website. As a first result, when reconsidering the typology of the so-called ‘sacred laws’, the authors offered a new classification of all inscriptions in Sokolowski's three collections. After the first launching of the platform, the scope of the project ‘Greek ritual norms’ was progressively more strictly defined. As for ‘ritual norms’, amongst the bulk of texts related to religious matters, the collection should include only those that are ‘prescriptive and, accordingly, normative about sacrifice and purification’ (J.-M. Carbon, V. Pirenne-Delforge, Axon 3/2 [2019], 103–16). As for ‘Greek’, the validity of the adjective might be questioned because of the multiplicity of places and of dates, but also of the very categories of prescriptions. R. Parker (Kernos 31 [2018], 73–81) concluded that there is, nevertheless, a common part that may be called ‘Greek’ religion.

The scope being well defined, the collection was prepared with the best method, providing texts, useful information about their material aspects and estimated dates, English and French translations and noteworthy line-by-line commentaries, which in some instances explain the chosen reading, in absence of a full apparatus. Although the underlying bibliography is said to be non-exhaustive, it is as complete as necessary. As the work is a collaborative one, one or two authors are noted for each file.

From a structural point of view, the digital format allows the authors to provide much more abundant information than traditional corpora printed on paper might do. A digital platform is evolutive (hence any reference to it should be dated). Not only does it allow for the correction of errors or changes of opinion, it can also be enriched with new entries. Whereas at the launch in 2017 there were 222 entries, at the date of writing there are 250 entries. New inscriptions are published each year, and CGRN will be steadily enriched.

However, the most striking advance lies elsewhere: the digital platform, relying on a database, combines information at various levels and makes it directly available. One may consult it like a book: a click on the box ‘Browse’ provides a list of numbered items with a title, a date and a place of origin; this might be called an enriched table of contents. A click on one of these items leads to a page that looks like the page of a printed corpus, providing all categories of information that are supposed to be found in an epigraphic collection, but at this stage distributed on two levels. At first glance, one may read the title, the date, the Greek text, the translations and the commentary, the details of the publication and the name(s) of the author(s) of the page. Second-level information, available through clicking, are the provenance and description of the support, the layout of the inscription and the bibliography. Only images are absent, which is standard, as the project does not include unpublished inscriptions. Yet the authors have scrutinised the images provided in the epigraphical publications, and in some instances they have chosen a new reading on that basis.

As CGRN is structurally a database, it is also possible to consult it through the ‘Search’ function. Users may search any English or French word from the website or any Greek word (or part of word) or a theme from a significant list. Requisites at that first level may be refined with second-level criteria such as date, location or type of text. For instance, searching for ‘Poseidon’ during the ‘5th century bc’ in a ‘dossier of regulations’ will provide one result: prescriptions of sacrifices to various deities including Poseidon from an Attic trittys dating from the last quarter of the century (CGRN 26). It is thus very convenient to gather all items referring to one and the same topic. The detailed commentaries also help to gather parallel instances, all cross-references being active thanks to hyperlinks.

A third aspect that should be stressed is the open access feature of CGRN. Scholarly institutions around the world are now favouring the dissemination of knowledge through digital resources that may be consulted by people with no access to libraries. That means both allowing remote readers to be informed and offering the possibility of extracting information for another use. Complying with fair-use rules, one may export the citation of the page or download it as a PDF (i.e. an image of it). Moreover, one may download the file in XML format, that is in a digital language used for many digital projects and providing insight into the typological level of the scientific process.

Collecting manifold data, carefully updated, described and interpreted into an easy-to-use resource, CGRN is a scientific product of high quality. It is of great help to all scholars interested in ancient Greek religion and is also of interest to a broader cultured audience.