• *  We are very grateful to Robert Parker for his valuable reactions and comments on a draft of this p (...)
• 1  Project of the Fonds National de Recherche Scientifique at the University of Liège (Belgium): F.R. (...)

1The present article aims to provide an alternative perspective on the corpus of Greek inscriptions known as “sacred laws”. Work on a new online version of this corpus has begun as a project of the Fonds National de Recherche Scientifique at the University of Liège, under the direction of the present authors.1 This article therefore serves as part of a preliminary introduction to a new collection of documents regularly called by this name and, more importantly, as a necessary redefinition of what might be implied by this designation.

• 2  So Parker (2004), p. 57.

5The past decade has witnessed a rekindling of interest in the subject of Greek sacred laws. The end result of the majority of these investigations has been to express caution in the very designation “sacred laws”. This grouping has been qualified as an ill-defined, but ultimately irreplaceable, “working category” consisting of rather diverse inscriptions that pertain to ancient Greek religion.2 Such circumspection is notably evidenced by the scare quotes with which “sacred laws” regularly continue to be invoked. Although they offer very useful introductions to the subject and its problems, few (if any) of these investigations have provided new proposals other than resigned acceptance of the designation “sacred law” for this group of texts and of the status quo ante of the corpus as a whole. After surveying these recent investigations, we will seek to provide several criteria for moving beyond this “working category”, and moreover, beyond the persistent idea of a single or unified “corpus of Greek sacred laws”.

• 3  Parker (2004) and (2005). See also now R.C.T. Parker, On Greek Religion, Ithaca & London 2011, p.  (...)
• 4  Parker (2004), p. 58.
• 5  Parker (2004), p. 65. This model is more specifically invoked in Parker (2005), p. 61-62.
• 6  Parker (2004), p. 66-67, and (2005), p. 62-63.
• 7  Parker (2004), p. 67: “A corpus of all the city decrees, records of charitable foundations and so (...)

6Robert Parker pioneered the detailed investigation of the corpus of inscriptions which had variously been collected throughout more than a century by von Prott, Ziehen, Sokolowski, and others, and which had gone largely unexamined.3 Parker’s first and more detailed contribution served to highlight how the material gathered so far did not form a unified collection, and how it in fact primarily consisted in inscribed laws or decrees “different in no regard except subject matter from other laws and decrees of the community that issued them”.4 To these could be added another broad category of texts he called “exegetical laws”, which consisted of inscriptions recording religious traditions outside the scope of decrees properly speaking, but which did not in effect detract from the model of “polis religion”, whereby all significant decisions relating to cultic matters fell to a greater or lesser degree under the authority of the city and its subgroups.5 In addition, Parker argued that the modern term “sacred law” did not directly parallel any ancient Greek designation, hence the caution with which it ought to be used.6 Yet, though providing an invaluable and concise survey of the “heterogeneous” religious subject matter of the inscriptions, Parker suggested neither any alternative to the current state of the corpus of sacred laws, nor any other term of reference for the documents, observing instead that any expansion of the corpus to include other inscriptions relating to Greek religion would be practically unfeasible.7

• 8 Lupu, NGSL, p. 3-112, originally published in 2005; cf. the postscript to the second edition, p. 50 (...)
• 9 Lupu, NGSL, p. 5.
• 10 Lupu, NGSL, p. 4: “These documents, commonly classified as leges sacrae (vel sim.) in epigraphical (...)
• 11 Lupu, NGSL, p. 5-6; though at n. 14 he implies that the “recurrence” of the ritual events prescribe (...)
• 12 Lupu, NGSL, p. 4: “The term sacred law itself, as it is used inclusively in this corpus, transcends (...)

7Nearly contemporaneously, Eran Lupu offered an even more detailed account of the contents of the corpus, which attempted some level of classification of the inscriptions included by his predecessors.8 Similarly to Parker, Lupu’s main aim was to describe and elucidate the subject matter of these “sacred laws”, accepting a broad distinction between civic laws and decrees, and other “customs [...] with little to no formal mediation”.9 Moreover, Lupu did not attempt to strongly justify the inclusion or exclusion of inscriptions from the corpus except by reference to the tradition established by von Prott, Ziehen and Sokolowski, while fully acknowledging the difficulties inherent in any attempt at a systematic definition of the documents contained in the patently miscellaneous corpus.10 Besides this respect for the diversity of the corpus, Lupu was satisfied with only two vague criteria for what texts to include: the documents must be prescriptive, and they must “pertain to [Greek] religion and particularly to cult practice”.11 In this case also, Lupu did not propose any alternative to the designation “sacred law”, contenting himself to state that the general term was a convenient and traditional designation for a group of inscriptions belonging to a wide variety of epigraphical genres.12

• 13  This includes also C. Talamo, “Leghe sacre e polis in Attica,” MGR 21 (1997), p. 235-255 (non vidi (...)
• 14  Naiden (2008), esp. p. 125-126.
• 15 Chaniotis (2009), p. 98.
• 16 Chaniotis (2009), e.g. p. 91 and 105.
• 17 Gagarin (2011), p. 101-102 and 110.

8More recently, a spate of other discussions have been published, which have for the most part acknowledged the contributions and the caveats of Parker and Lupu, while also continuing to employ both the traditional corpus and its designation as “sacred law”.13 Fred Naiden follows Parker in his distinction between two types of “sacred laws”, decrees and “exegetical” texts. Wishing to avoid the term “law” in discussing these inscriptions, he tentatively opts to call them “religious regulations”, as have other scholars before him, but it must immediately be said that this is merely an equally imprecise designation for the same corpus of inscriptions.14 Naiden offers a valuable perspective on sanctions in “sacred laws”, particularly their role in distinguishing between the civic and “exegetical” material that Parker had outlined, but he does not explore the specific impact of these sanctions on cult practice. Angelos Chaniotis has expanded on Parker’s division of sacred laws between laws or decrees and “exegetical” material, by proposing an intriguing “stratigraphy” of ritual norms in Greek cult, identifying three layers which can be tied to their ancient Greek names: patria, nomoi, and psephismata. These are respectively, unrecorded or ancestral “customs”, “instructions”, and “dynamic” decrees seeking to augment cultic norms.15 But, caveats notwithstanding, this analysis still appears to entail more burdensome and conventional references to “cult regulations” or “sacred laws”.16 In another study, discussing archaic sacred laws from Crete, Michael Gagarin also follows Parker and Lupu, claiming that “[d]espite being a modern creation, the term “sacred laws” has proven useful”.17

• 18 Georgoudi (2010).
• 19 Georgoudi (2010), p. 41-42: “On ajoute d’habitude que cette dénomination est purement conventionnel (...)
• 20 Georgoudi (2010), p. 42-43.
• 21 Georgoudi (2010), esp. p. 47 and 54. For example, the inscriptions included in the extremely useful (...)

9Equally intriguing but differently is an article by Stella Georgoudi, which appeared concurrently with these recent forays into the thorny controversy of Greek “sacred laws”.18 Presenting her work as only a “sketch” of an approach to the subject, Georgoudi has also observed that, despite the best efforts of Parker and others, one still continues to refer to “sacred laws” without probing the matter much further.19 However, she shies away from a “définition rigoureuse” of the subject, and settles for the equally capacious and vague designation “règlement religieux”.20 By opening up the corpus of relevant inscriptions, for example to include temple inventories or other inscriptions, she seems to believe that one will be on firmer ground to study Greek religion as a whole.21 Georgoudi’s proposal has much to recommend it, since Greek polytheism is of course best studied from a variety of approaches and evidence. However, it risks expanding the notion of “sacred laws” or “règlements religieux” so widely that it would no longer be useful, a danger against which Parker and others have warned. In fact, the problem may well be that the designation is too wide as it is.

• 22 CID. Cf. again the more encompassing approach of Graf (1985).
• 23 Frisone (2000); a second projected volume was planned but has not appeared.
• 24  Another proposal comparable to the small corpus of Frisone is A. Petrovic & I. Petrovic’s forthcom (...)
• 25  While the relatively formulaic phraseology of the documents could be more or less consistently del (...)

10Two other approaches to the corpus of “sacred laws” have come to the forefront in the decades since Sokolowski’s volumes appeared. On the one hand, there is the choice to treat only a well-defined sub-group of the inscriptions, perhaps first made by Rougemont in his collection of “règlements religieux” from Delphi.22 Another parallel undertaking was that of Frisone, who collected and commented a small corpus consisting of about a half-dozen funerary laws and regulations, most of which had also been included by Sokolowski.23 These approaches have yielded valuable sub-corpora of the documents, and suggest how one might continue to approach the larger subject of “sacred laws” from an epigraphical standpoint.24 For example, it would notably be possible to propose a series of volumes gathering the sacred laws of various cities or regions, which would complement that of Rougemont. An alternative avenue of research would be to propose typological sub-corpora of the different epigraphic genres of “sacred laws” insofar as these can defined. This might entail volumes gathering civic decrees on cult, sacrificial calendars, sales of priesthoods, boundary stones, private foundations, and other categories such as funerary laws.25 However valid, these approaches would probably necessitate a very gradual approach to collecting and reediting “sacred laws”, and they could of course make no pretension of offering a ready alternative to the corpus “sacred laws” as a whole.

• 26 Jameson, Jordan & Kotansky (1993), cf. now NGSL 27 (ca. 500-450 BC).
• 27 Herda (2006), and cf. LSAM 50 (cut in the 2^nd c. BC, but dating probably to the 5^th c.). For a poin (...)
• 28  Cf. its earlier inclusion in the corpus as LSCG 65 (91 BC).
• 29 Deshours (2006); Gawlinski (2012).
• 30 Gawlinski (2012), p. 3, adding: “It is a problematic term—no longer to be used without qualificatio (...)
• 31 Robertson (2010); on the inscription from Cyrene, cf. still LSS 115 (ca. 350-300 BC). See also the (...)
• 32 Robertson (2010), p. 3-4; his comment that the texts “are seldom laws in the sense of enactments by (...)

11On the other hand, a new form of detailed monograph on individual “sacred laws” has recently become prominent. In most cases, this involves a new edition and ample commentary of a lengthy or particularly noteworthy ‘sacred law’. The first of this genre to appear was the fundamental editio princeps of the “sacred law” (actually a dossier of different sacrificial prescriptions inscribed on a lead tablet) from Selinous resulting from the collaborative work of Jameson, Jordan and Kotansky.26 More recently, Herda has advanced a similar monograph, albeit one reediting an inscription, the “so-called Molpoi-statutes” (der sog. Molpoi-Satzung) from Miletos, with a very lengthy commentary.27 In many other cases, it would probably not have been possible to write some 600 pages on a “sacred law”, but the 45-line long inscription does present a number of interesting challenges. Yet, since the text is actually presented as the decree of a cult-association, the uncertainty displayed in the title of Herda’s monograph betrays the problems inherent in designating it or treating as a “sacred law”. Another “sacred law” which has now warranted two separate monographs is the text from Andania, probably the lengthiest and best preserved inscription which thematically defines all of the aspects of a festival.28 The first volume, by Deshours, did not really offer a new edition but helpfully presented the inscription within its wider historical context, while the most recent one from Gawlinski represents a fundamental reedition with commentary, in the spirit of the editors of the Selinous tablet.29 Though the text from Andania is called a ‘sacred law’ in her title, Gawlinski is well aware of the problematic character of the designation and she commendably uses the inscription’s internal self-reference, the Greek word diagramma, in her descriptive commentary on the text. Yet she nonetheless concedes that “sacred law” remains in use due to the “overwhelming body of evidence” for such inscriptions.30 A similar volume is perhaps that of Robertson, which juxtaposes the oblique reedition of two famous inscriptions, the tablet from Selinous and the stele concerning purifications from Cyrene, with detailed and speculative commentary.31 This author also seems satisfied to accept the status quo and does not venture into a detailed discussion of the concept of “sacred law”.32 While nearly all of these detailed and specific monographs are extremely useful, they do not represent a sustainable approach to the corpus of “sacred laws” for several reasons, the most mundane one being that few of the inscriptions are sufficiently detailed to support monographic studies. Furthermore, as in the case of regional or typological sub-corpora, such monographs could not provide a viable alternative to the corpus of “sacred laws” as a whole.

• 33  Contrary to Lupu, Parker (2004), p. 57-58, already lamented the “force of inertia [through which] (...)
• 34  Similarly, many epigraphical corpora, e.g. most recently IG XII 4 (Cos), continue to speak vaguely (...)

12It has now been well recognised that there is a perpetual danger of a complacent tautological definition of “sacred laws” as meaning “those texts conventionally designated or collected as ‘sacred laws’”.33 The scare quotes do not help at all, especially if one has to cite the abundant and growing bibliography surveyed above. Indeed, one may well wonder to what extent the term “sacred law” has in fact proven useful, as these scholars have argued, beyond perhaps offering a vague “convenience” or a familiar reference point. Similarly, one might easily fall into the trap of speaking of terms like “religious regulation”, which are not significantly more transparent than “sacred law”.34 The root of the problem, as has become clear, is that these inscriptions were, for the most part, not usually more “sacred” than others, except – but not always – in their subject matter. Moreover, they were not always strictly speaking “laws”, or even “regulations”, either in the ancient or the modern sense.

• 35  And see further our more detailed discussion of hieros nomos in Carbon & Pirenne-Delforge (forthco (...)

13Not a few of the scholars mentioned above, and particularly Chaniotis, Georgoudi and Gawlinski, may offer an alternative way of approaching “sacred laws”, namely through the internal designations of the sources themselves. But one can readily agree with Parker and others that modern and ancient terms are not easily reconciled, as was briefly discussed above.35 In other words, it would be unrealistic to provide only a corpus of those texts which could be called patria or hieroi nomoi, since this would only involve an extremely narrow body of material. Moreover, the internal designations for the documents known as “sacred laws” are quite varied, ranging from decrees to horoi. Likewise, as was intimated above, it would be impractical to include such a wide body of material as all cult inventories and accounts, or even the incredibly numerous Greek decrees which deal with sacred matters. Recent scholarship also appears headed in various directions, such as epigraphical sub-corpora and individual monographs, which are useful but may not be conducive to the creation of a single corpus. Though attractive and perhaps incrementally feasible, a thoroughly reedited and commented printed corpus would be a project on a vast scale which still might not resolve the problematic issue of “what is a sacred law”.

• 36  A point well noted, for example, by Gawlinski (2012), p. 3: “leges sacrae was a category created i (...)
• 37  A good example of this is the gymnasiarchal law from Beroia, included as NGSL 14 (further discusse (...)

14The tradition and inertia of the past century ought not to preclude a more thorough revision of what can be desired in a corpus of “sacred laws”. It is in fact high time to move beyond this designation, and several reconsiderations present themselves when starting from a tabula rasa as it were. The most important of these are: why a corpus and what is its intended audience? One of the criticisms offered of Sokolowski was that his editions were insufficiently based on careful revision of the stones and standard editing practice, but his intended audience appears to have been historians of Greek religion rather than epigraphists per se.36 Lupu’s corpus has corrected Sokolowski’s bias by present­ing detailed and cautious epigraphical editions, balanced with discussion aimed at the study of Greek religion. But some of the inscriptions included by Lupu only tangentially referred to cultic matters, which caused a substantial portion of his commentary to veer away from such subjects.37 One could argue that this represents an overcorrection of Sokolowski, at least from the point of view of convenience and ease of consultation.

• 38  For the most recent TEI guidelines, see: http://www.tei-c.org/Guidelines/P5/. Cf. particularly the (...)

15Furthermore, recent research has enabled the development of standards for the online edition of inscriptions, the most important of which is TEI XML (Text Encoding Initiative, Extensible Markup Language).38 This form of encoding and markup greatly facilitates the lemmatisation and online publication of inscriptions. Though primarily applied to the development of definitive epigraphical corpora, it seems that in theory this form of publication would be particularly well suited to the inscriptions known as “sacred laws”, which include a disparate and increasing number of documents. Online publication would solve at least some of the problems that are involved in serial or monographic publication of the texts. For instance, one could seamlessly publish successive versions of a given text, reflecting later revisions as well as increasing commentary, and continue to add to a growing and easily cross-referenced collection of documents.

• 39  Cp. Lupu, NGSL, Part 1, who surveys 4 broad topics: “Sanctuaries and Sacred Space”, “Cult Official (...)
• 40  Cf. already the proposed appellation “la norme” in Brulé (2009), p. 7-11. See further Carbon & Pir (...)
• 41  A project aimed at creating an online database of Greek oracles is being developed by Pierre Bonne (...)

16Given all of these reevaluations, an alternative to the existing corpus of Greek “sacred laws” can now be proposed. Consideration of the intended audience for past corpora suggests that instead of a unified epigraphic corpus, which “sacred laws” could never truly constitute in any case, one should instead try to build a collection of inscriptions which benefit scholars of Greek religion. However, this is still too wide a body of material to be presented in a single project. The subject matter of the documents included in the past falls under various broad rubrics, notably the definition and protection of Greek sanctuaries, but two of the most prominent and studied ones are the rituals of sacrifice and purification.39 Accordingly, it has seemed to the present authors that the preferable solution for moving beyond Greek “sacred laws” is to collect those inscriptions which, whether in full or in part, contain sacrificial and purificatory ritual norms. The use of “norm” as a comprehensive term helps to dispel the notion of strict “law”, decree or regulation, categories to which not all the relevant documents belong, while at the same time acknowledging the degree to which Greek inscriptions record both ancestral and innovative ritual practices.40 This new terminology also properly includes several other inscriptions which can be viewed as containing or related to ritual norms, such as oaths, oracular consultations, theoria, games and contests, prayers and hymns, etc. Such documents, insofar as they are relevant, could be gradually included into the collection in the future or form the subject of separate but complementary projects.41

• 42  The collection will make no pretension of gathering material beyond the epigraphic sources, such a (...)
• 43  The Epidoc XML format to a large extent subsumes the apparatus criticus, though one with the essen (...)
• 44  The database could perhaps eventually form the basis for a printed tool, such as a “Lexicon of Gre (...)

17The proposed publication will therefore be entitled a Collection of Greek Ritual Norms, and abbreviated CGRN.42 It will attempt to strike a compromise between a strictly epigraphical approach and that of Sokolowski for example, by presenting some new editions and revisions of the texts, but mostly standard editions where these are available. It will include a basic but serviceable apparatus criticus, noting only those variant readings and restorations which could have some bearing on the interpretation of a given inscription.43 The text will be translated in English and in French for the convenience of the reader, or commented in both languages in the case of fragments. The main aim will be the publication of an online lemmatisation and commentary of the inscriptions which will enable efficient cross-referencing and comparison between the texts, and in turn facilitate the creation of a lexical database of Greek ritual vocabulary.44 In what follows, a series of general criteria for the definition of this collection will be suggested. Although the criteria suggested will inevitably not satisfy everyone, it will at least be clear that to speak of “sacred laws” will simply no longer suffice. In addition, it is to be hoped that the new collection outlined here will largely replace the volumes edited by Sokolowski as a scholarly resource.

• 45  This has the added advantage of reducing the total number of traditional “sacred laws” from ca. 50 (...)
• 46  For the sake of consistency, inscriptions previously included in the various volumes of corpus wil (...)

18Rather than offering a “maximalist” and vague corpus as in the past, one can therefore opt instead for a manageable collection containing what might be viewed as an essential group of texts.45 Such a selection necessitates a more precise identification of what one might mean by “ritual norm”, and a set of criteria concomitant with this definition can be established. Some of the criteria, in fact, can be argued to have a precedent in the corpus collected previously, whether implicitly in the case of Sokolowski or explicitly in that Lupu, though the aim is to apply them with greater consistency to the present project. None of them are foolproof of course, and they mostly serve as guidelines for constituting an interesting body of inscriptions relevant to contemporary scholarship.46

• 47  Cf. e.g. LSCG 180 (cult of Archilochos on Paros, ca. 275-225 BC), on which see now D. Clay, Archil (...)
• 48  Cp. e.g. LSS 103 (Camiros, 3^rd c. BC): Ζηνὶ δ[ὲ] | Ὑητίωι | ὅκκα δέηι. Other more obvious excerpts (...)
• 49  Such is the case of the scribe Spensithios (SEG 27, 631, Lyttos, ca. 500 BC) whose sacred duties a (...)
• 50  Also not germane are decrees establishing lists of priests or participants in the cult, which have (...)
• 51  Cf. LSAM 25 (Erythrai, 2^nd c. BC), an inventory of priesthood sales with prices obtained. Financia (...)

20In the case of sacrifice, the offering and consecration of animals and/or of vegetal substances is at the core of what is concerned. Thus, inscriptions which relate to Greek thysia in all of its declensions, together with a host of other Greek terms such as hagizein, fall under this optic. However, this is probably still a subject too large for a single collection. Indeed, several inscriptions only mention that a thysia was or has to be offered, without any specific details. This is for example the case with prescriptive oracles which simply specify that one is to “sacrifice and receive good omens” to a series of gods, but also with several other texts which simply specify thyein or the like and which have seldom been thought of as “sacred laws”.47 Other inscriptions, in a similar fashion, simply describe that a sacrifice is to be performed “according to custom” or that one should sacrifice “whenever is necessary”.48 Comparable requirements are sometimes enjoined upon individuals or civic officials, such as “to sacrifice the sacrificial animals for the city”.49 The attribution of a generic geras or portion from a sacrifice or the right of participation (metousia) in this sacrifice, which is often conferred in the honorific decrees of various Greek cities, are of doubtful interest to the present collection.50 In addition, texts concerned wholly with the financial sale of priestly offices or the monetary remuneration of such officials do not form a part of the “hard core” of the subject.51

• 52  Cp. even such a small text as this other one from Camiros (LSS 98, ca. 200 BC), which apparently c (...)
• 53  One might therefore consider excluding from immediate consideration a text such as the very fragme (...)

21Though of course somewhat informative and clearly relating to “ritual norms” of sacrifice, such inscriptions are probably insufficiently detailed to figure among the core texts which interest scholars of Greek religion. Instead, one might view the minimum level of informativeness as the indication of a certain number of rituals details: not just the deity to which the sacrifice is to be made, but a specific indication of the animal or vegetal offering involved, as well as, yet not always, the date on which the sacrifice takes place; or conversely, a restriction against performing a given type of sacrifice or offering a certain kind of animal. Accord­ingly, the details itemised in sacrificial calendars are perhaps best representative of this basic requirement, since they regularly follow the order date – deity – sacrificial animal.52 In the case of a sacrificial division or distribution, the indication of a specific portion from the animals, such as the hide, a leg or the entrails, is correspondingly desirable.53 If at least one such criterion is met then, the nexus of other ritual details described in a given text could be included and it could feature as a core document in the collection.

• 54  Such boundary stones have sometimes been included in the corpus: e.g. LSCG 121 (Chios, date uncert (...)
• 55  Texts probably to be excluded are: LSCG 149 (Cyprus, 3^rd c. BC, fragment decree on the protection (...)
• 56  Cf. e.g. LSCG 3 (485/4 BC, cp. IG I³ 4), the so-called “Hekatompedon decree”, probably one of the (...)
• 57  How is one, for example, to interpret the interdictions found at Panamara, LSAM 68 (Hellenistic), (...)
• 58  For the first point, cf. e.g. LSAM 55 (Knidos, ca. 350-300 BC), line 4-8: ὅπω̣[ς] | ἁγνεύηται τὸ̣ (...)
• 59  Contrast e.g. LSCG 130 (Astypalaia, ca. 300-250 BC): [ἐ]ς τὸ ἱερὸν μὴ ἐσέρπεν ὅσ|τις μὴ ἁγνός ἐστι (...)

22In the case of purity and the ritual of purification, a comparable criterion can be applied. Though in some cases one finds rather nonspecific boundary stones restricting access to sanctuaries, some as basic as the indication abaton, these yield comparatively little ritual information compared to more detailed texts.54 Similarly, there are several boundary stones relating to asylia and decrees concerning the protection of suppliants which have been incorporated into the corpus, but by no means consistently.55 The whole topic of the delimitation of the Greek sanctuary is a vast one, and includes the notions of preserving its sacrality as well as of protecting the physical integrity of its boundaries and belongings. The latter is reflected in several inscriptions included by Sokolowski and Lupu which are tangentially, if at all, concerned with sacrifice and purification.56 These texts can often be differentiated from boundaries and decrees which are explicitly concerned with rituals of purification, though some cases are less clear-cut and the concepts of “protection” and “purity” are of course not always easily distinguished.57 In other words, it would again seem that, for the inscription to be included as a fundamental text, a desirable requirement is a minimum degree of specific ritual information. For example, some indication that purity, rather than mere cleanliness, is the object of the given interdictions stipulated by a decree, or that a purification ritual is clearly the sanction imposed for illicit behaviour.58 Boundary stones which are wholly preoccupied with the requirement that worshippers enter a sanctuary with a pure mind, while fascinating in their own right and often formally similar, do not provide the same level of detail as lists of abstentions and ablutions required for entry in certain sanctuaries.59

• 60  Most famously, at LSS 115 (Cyrene) and NGSL 27 (Selinous).
• 61  Another example of such “vagueness” would be the famous convention between the Akarneis and Anakto (...)
• 62  For example, several of the inscriptions included by Lupu would not be at the centerstage of the n (...)
• 63 Sokolowski’s corpora were implicitly quite selective about what to include or not, but one might th (...)

23Ritual practice and performance thus forms the main subject matter of the inscriptions to be included, in which sacrificial and purificatory norms often intersect.60 The argument proposed here is not to exclude entirely “vague” documents, since, as was stated above, they could easily be added to successive iterations of the online publication. Rather, the guideline established here simply excludes such texts from the “hard core” of ritual norms in the collection, and confines other texts to marginal references, at least for the time being.61 The same can be said of extremely fragmentary documents, whose interpretation is often hypothetical and which do not warrant being the focus of attention of the first phase of the project.62 But the advantage of this reconsideration of the entire corpus will be the addition of relevant and noteworthy inscriptions which have been omitted in the past, most notably several well-known inscriptions from Olympia and some accounts from Delos.63

• 64 NGSL 14 (ca. 200-170 BC); Hermaia: lines 45-87.

24The idea that the text must contain a certain basic amount of detail describing the rituals involved naturally raises a related issue, namely the proportion that that information occupies within a given inscription. In most cases, the whole document, even if a decree with a lengthy introduction or preamble which does not touch on rituals per se, can of course be included as a ritual norm. But in other inscriptions, sacrificial or purificatory prescriptions may be lost among a wealth of detail which pertains to several other subjects. In the gymnasiarchal law from Beroia included as a “sacred law” by Lupu, sacrifice forms only a small part of the subjects treated, which include the oath of the gymnasiarch and his subordinates, the supervision and education of boys, access to the gymnasium and good behaviour.64 Only some 43 out of the 173 extant lines of the inscription concern a festival celebrated in the gymnasium called the Hermaia, and even these only casually discuss sacrifices to Hermes. It is therefore worth asking if such a small passage from a lengthy inscription validates its entire inclusion in a collection of Greek ritual norms.

• 65  Lesser Panathenaia: LSCG 33 (note that Ziehen, LGS II 29 had also only included side B); Labyadai: (...)
• 66 Lupu, NGSL, p. 7, outlining this contradictory position: “it is incumbent upon documents which are (...)

25Since the proposed project is not to be constrained by the strictest standards of epigraphic reedition and is instead to a degree unshackled by its online format, an alternative can be proposed. This would involve in some cases simply offering a small excerpt or reference from a given inscription while describing its context; as above, such texts would not belong to the core of the collection. In others, where the extract from a text is necessarily more significant, this would entail setting the passage in relief within a republication of the whole inscription. (One would not wish to quantify this approach, however, and the judgement concerning whether to cite only a given passage will necessarily be a subjective, editorial choice.) For example, the text of the gymnasiarchal law from Beroia might appear as a background in which the lines on the Hermaia would be significantly highlighted. With an indication of the context of the whole inscription, only the latter passage would be translated and commented fully. In some cases, this may appear much more appropriate than others, for example when only certain sides of a stele discuss rituals norms of sacrifice and purification. For example, it might be argued that side B of the decree on the “Lesser” Panathenaia which discusses the festival could be to some extent dissociated from side A concerning the misthosis of the Nea, or that the 2 of the 4 sides of the stele of the Labyadai, those dealing with funerary purification and banquets respectively, could be treated more or less independently.65 In all of these cases, the relevant ritual norms would be briefly set in their proper context, which would be facilitated by the format of the virtual edition, but they would remain the focus of the commentary and not be mired in discussions of other subjects of little interest to the intended audience. In arguing for such a selective criterion, it may be observed that a precedent for it had already been set by Ziehen and Sokolowski, who sometimes only included parts of inscriptions, though seldom with the proper contextual caveats. It is only the recent corpus of Lupu which prefers to view the inscriptions as a whole, not to be excerpted.66 In the case of previously well-edited documents, Lupu’s approach becomes even more difficult to justify, and the idea of selected passages correspondingly more attractive. Moreover, the number of excerpts which could be included is perhaps more significant now that one is no longer bound by the idea of “sacred law”, and this would doubtless render the collection more useful for historians of Greek religion.

• 67  Cf. e.g. NGSL 24 (Lissos, Hellenistic?): Θυμίλος ἵσσατο τόνδ’ Ἀσκληπιὸν ἐνθάδε πρῶτος· | Θαρσύτας (...)
• 68  Cp. Lupu, NGSL, p. 5-6, noting similar difficulties.
• 69  Most famously in the headings of the calendar of Athens, e.g. fr. 3: τάδε τὸ ἕτερον ἔτος θύεται A[ (...)
• 70  Priestly perquisites: e.g. SEG 54, 214 (Aixone, ca. 400-375 BC). Delos: synoptic selections from t (...)
• 71  Such texts have almost never been included in the corpus of “sacred laws”, for example the Boukopi (...)

26The notion of “norm” is the other premise which will influence the choice of inscriptions included in the planned collection. This concept, as indicated above, enables one to get rid of the idea that the relevant documents are laws or decrees, since some of them are dedications, accounts, or the like.67 Instead, the inscriptions to be included must, in a wide sense, have a normative character. Ideally, this implies that the text is strongly prescriptive with imperative, future or infinitive verbs.68 However, some inscriptions still demonstrably have a normative aspect while being more descriptive than prescriptive: this is notably the case of sacrificial calendars, where one usually finds the present indicative passive.69 The description of traditional practice is of course a form of normativity. It therefore seems fundamentally important to also include texts which are records of practice such as inventories of priestly perquisites, and even selections from the accounts of Delos.70 To be clearly distinguished from these categories of documents are inscriptions recording the fulfillment of vows or sacrifices, which like many dedications certainly do reflectritual norms, but do not necessarily embody or codify them.71

• 72 Lupu, NGSL p. 7-8, citing SIG 3, 398 (Cos, ca. 278 BC), where the unrepeated context is relatively (...)
• 73  Even in the case of sufficiently detailed prescriptive oracles, one may reasonably suppose that th (...)

27This distinction is also impactful for the often problematic identification of the recurrent character of rituals. It seems clear that to be normative in a meaningful sense the rituals described or prescribed by the inscriptions must have a durative character. However, this is often difficult to demonstrate absolutely. While sacrificial calendars and other accounts may be reasonably surmised to lay down traditional or new and future practice, other sacrifices are sometimes prescribed which appear to have been one-off affairs. This is particularly the case with thanksgiving sacrifices or with oath rituals which seal agreements.72 Though a categorical judgement is sometimes impossible, it seems best to exclude many of these documents from the present collection, except where the rituals performed are demonstrably recurrent.73

• 74  Contrast Lupu (NGSL, p. 7), who rather feebly attempts to justify their exclusion: “all the cases (...)
• 75 LSCG 106 (Ios, 3^rd c. BC), festival sacrifice for a king (Antigonos Gonatas or Doson?); cp. LSAM 72 (...)
• 76  According to the current project inventory, the number of additional texts to be included in the “ (...)
• 77  For a very basic norm, probably insufficiently detailed for the purposes of the collection, cf. e. (...)
• 78  It will also constitute a contribution to the ongoing and stimulating debates about the character (...)

28A related issue is presented by other inscriptions which are normally excluded from the corpus of “sacred laws”, namely those concerning the cult of living or dead individuals, and notably Hellenistic rulers. There does not seem to be any reasonable justification for excluding these texts from a collection of ritual norms, since the intention behind their foundation was surely that they would be new but durative customs of religious practice.74 It is worth pointing out that at least one inscription directly concerning ruler cult had so far been included in the “corpus”, among several other heroic cult foundations, all of which are, as might be expected, set “within a framework of divine worship”.75 Though these could form an obvious epigraphic sub-corpus, decrees founding cults of Hellenistic rulers, as well as cults of individuals honoured with civic burial and recurring sacrifices for example, would significantly but not prohibitively increase the number of ritual norms in the proposed collection.76 Several texts only provide basic information concerning the foundation of a sanctuary or altar on which to perform a periodic sacrifice, while others yield a wealth of ritual detail which could be compared with other norms relating to deities of the Greek pantheon.77 It is to be hoped that the inclusion of this material will be viewed as a valuable innovation of the present collection with respect to the earlier corpora of “sacred laws”.78

• 79  This has caused uncertainties in the past and notable discrepancies between the various iterations (...)
• 80  Herodian inscriptions: NGSL p. 6, 19-20; Pergamene calendar: LGS I 27 (129-138 AD); Sabbatistai: L (...)
• 81 OGIS 56; cf. S. Pfeiffer, Das Dekret von Kanopos (238 v. Chr.), Munich, 2004.
• 82 LSS 121 (end of 2^nd or 3^rd c. AD).
• 83  Cf. e.g. OGIS 383 (ca. 70-31 BC).
• 84  Or indeed a text like LSS 119 (1^st c. BC), itself from Ptolemais.

29Of course, even in this plan of a new collection, meant to advance beyond the existing corpora of “sacred laws”, several uncertainties remain. The most salient of these is the problem of the cultural and temporal limit that one might wish to impose on the material.79 It is clear that since the purported aim is to gather a collection of Greek ritual norms, that the texts must be Greek, both in language and in cultural terms. But the boundaries of Greek religion and ritual are not easy to define. Though inscriptions from the Herodian temple in Jerusalem which were written in Greek have sensibly been omitted from the corpus of “sacred laws” in the past, it still contains such inscriptions as a Pergamene calendar detailing Roman festival celebrations, or a decree of a perhaps syncretistic Jewish association called the Sabbatistai from Cilicia.80 Should one include festival decrees from Ptolemaic Egypt, such as the famous decree of Canopus inaugurating a cult for the princess Berenike, which have never been seen as “sacred laws”?81 And how is one to treat inscriptions which take on a distinctly Roman character while maintaining traditional aspects, such as the patrios nomos of Ephesos concerning its prytaneion?82 The fascinating dossier of the cult foundation and religious inscriptions of Antiochos I of Kommagene presents an interesting mix of Greek and Zoroastrian beliefs, never yet included as evidence for ritual norms.83 Cases of hybrid cults and rituals are necessarily inextricable, and including some of these texts is perhaps no different from doing the same with a boundary stone concerning purification and relating to Egyptian cults imported into a Greek city.84

• 85  As this article represents part of the introduction to that ongoing project, we would finally like (...)

31Here, as elsewhere in the investigation of this set of inscriptions, no satisfactory resolution may be possible. In the end, the decision about whether or not to include a given text may ultimately depend on a personal choice by the editors, but one may be consoled by the fact that online publication permits the successive addition of further documents. Through the examples cited above, the present discussion has given at least a partial overview of how the proposed Collection of Greek Ritual Norms (CGRN) will be constituted, and what will be excluded, at least for the present time.85