This short book aims to give an explanation of the decline of the Delphic Oracle in the Roman period, and to offer a new way of looking at Delphi, by distinguishing between the working of the oracle on the one hand and the wider life of the sanctuary on the other. How new this approach is and how adequate the explanation for decline is, are open to question. After a brief introduction, the first chapter, ‘The History of Delphi’, provides a somewhat superficial account of the consultation process, followed by a narrative of events relating to Delphi from the Archaic period to the second century ad. The next pair of chapters are where the distinction between oracle and sanctuary is touched on: ‘Plutarch and the Duality of Delphi’ gives a summary of what is said in Plutarch's Delphic dialogues, while ‘Delphi: Sacred Space and Cultural Memory’ gives a description of the site, a brief account of non-oracular activities and a discussion of Pausanias’ description of the sanctuary. The next two chapters, ‘Theological Oracles from Didyma’ and ‘Theological Oracles from Claros’, compare the oracular activities of these sanctuaries in Asia Minor with Delphi, suggesting that theological inquiry had become of more interest than the more practical concerns of individuals, and that Delphi could not adapt to this change in fashion. Two further chapters propose other rivals to the Delphic oracle: ‘Occult Practices: Astrology’ and ‘Theurgy and Soteriology’. Why astrology should be a challenge to Delphi in the period from the second century ad, but not earlier, is not really explained (beyond the claim that Roman emperors, especially Tiberius, were keen on astrology), and there seems to be no consideration of how much, if any, interest the theurgy of Neoplatonist philosophers held for the wider population who would have made up Delphi's clientele. Two and a half pages of conclusion sum up the preceding argument. Overall the book has a rather dated feel. Much of it consists of summaries of the views of earlier scholars; sweeping generalisations are preferred to analyses of the ancient evidence. One example can illustrate this: ‘In terms of oracles more generally, Greeks of the second and third centuries ad were perhaps disenchanted with the ambiguity of oracles, desiring a sense of certainty about nature and existence that they could not find with oracles’ (p. 133). Bizarrely, each chapter has its own bibliography, so H.W. Parke & D.E.W. Wormell, The Delphic Oracle (1956) is listed eight times. On the other hand, some important recent items do not appear at all, for example, M. Scott, Delphi: a History of the Centre of the World (2014) and A. Bendlin, ‘On the Uses and Disadvantages of Divination: Oracles and their Literary Representations in the Time of the Second Sophistic’, in J.A. North & S.R.F. Price (edd.), The Religious History of the Roman Empire (2011), pp. 175–250.