This volume, a revised version of G.'s Ph.D. thesis defended at the Universities of Wrocław and Liverpool, is the first exhaustive study on a subject to which Henri Bouvier dedicated two articles (ZPE 30 [1978]; ZPE 58 [1985]) in a more traditional way with chronological tables 40 years ago. G. writes not only about the text of the inscriptions, but also about their material support and their location in Delphi, that is in the sanctuary of the Pythian god. For her project Delphi is a special place: no other has yielded so many honorific decrees, even if it was politically an undersized city. Conversely, the number of foreign decrees for local citizens is much more in line with the range of the city in the Greek world. This unbalanced situation is due to the appeal of the oracular sanctuary and also to the Pythian games for athletes, horse-owners and musicians.

G. studies the decrees and one of their results, the honorific statues often known from their tituli honorarii, together: in epigraphic publications the two categories of inscriptions are usually published in different sections, the tituli honorarii with dedications, a divinity sometimes being mentioned in the dative. Until the laws and decrees of the city will be published in volume 6, Lois et décrets de la cité de Delphes, of the Corpus des Inscriptions de Delphes, and tituli honorarii in volume 7, Dédicaces, the texts are to be found in the third series of Les Fouilles de Delphes, in old German publications and in scholarly journals. All inscriptions are available in PHI, but the same document can be found several times in relation to different editions. It is a pity that G., who came to Athens and frequented the American School and the British School, does not seem to have visited the French School to make contact with the team in charge of the decrees in the Corpus. The confrontation of different approaches to the same object could have been fruitful.

The number of well-dated documents allows for a fine chronological study of the way in which the city of Delphi, and also the Amphictyony, co-administrator of the sanctuary, and different groups (cities, leagues, associations) chose to honour people and to display it.

Between the book's introduction and epilogue there are six chapters: the situation of epigraphy and honours in Delphi from 600 bce to 400 ce, clearly illustrated in colourful graphs – the documents date mostly from the third century bce to the second century ce; in Chapter 2 the different types of honours given at Delphi are shown through the centuries, also with histograms (in black and white): so the evolution of the ‘standard package’ can be more easily followed than in Bouvier's tables; in Chapter 3 G. describes the Delphic proxeny network: sadly the maps were not executed for this book – the difference of scales between the originals and the copies here makes them unreadable: maps 1 and 2 are over-scaled; maps 3–7 allow readers to follow the narrowing of the network, but those who are not familiar with the Delphic proxenies would not know the cities the proxenoi were from; the choice (maps 8 and 9) of online movable maps is strange: in the book (even in the e-book) the ‘balloon’ prevents one from seeing the exact place the proxenos came from. Chapter 4 extends the study to other types of gifts with a special focus on particular honorands such as Hellenistic kings, Roman magistrates and emperors, and a section on women. Chapter 5 is a precise study of the Delphic honorific decrees’ formula, with commentaries of texts given in Greek and in translation, showing the distinction between abbreviated and full pattern decrees, the first category being very popular, and the tituli honorarii. In the sixth and last chapter the honours, that is the stone copies of decrees, and the statues with their bases, are situated in the sanctuary of Apollo. G. states well the question of the decrees being written on stelai or on building walls. She explains the motives of the choice of walls (costs, durability etc.). For the number of stelai in the fourth century and the reversion of the trend in the third century it is also possible that the demolition of the temple before its reconstruction provided good material with the marble tiles for many decades. In this chapter it is a pity that some of the illustrations are obsolete: G. Daux published a drawing A. Martineau made in 1910 for the first study of the base of the Rhodian pillar by E. Bourguet; recent studies give a higher support for Helios’ chariot, and a second dedication on the bottom (p. 144); the reconstruction of the base of the statue of Aemilius Paullus that K. Michalowski published in 1949 was an artistic production of A. Tournaire; a new, more accurate, image was published in BCH in 1982.

G. worked hard in order to write this book, but she has not achieved a deep familiarity with the Delphic realities: for example, the constructions linked with Domitian's activity (p. 32) were paid for with Apollo's money under the supervision of the Amphictyonic epimeletes (ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ χρημάτων, ὑπὸ τὴν τοῦ δεῖνα ἐπιμελητείαν vel sim., CID 4.139–41, 146–8); an archeis is not a priestess of Apollo, but of Dionysus (p. 61 – the biography on the theme is not restricted to Bourguet 1905 and Jannoray 1946: see M.-C. Villanueva Puig, in: L'Association dionysiaque [1986]); if the relation between Athens and Delphi was weakened in the Hellenistic period because of the antagonism between the Aetolian League and Macedonia (p. 84), the Marathonian Tetrapolis sent its theoria long before Athens did. A confusion between the Coan physician Philistos (Choix d'inscriptions de Delphes 121) and a supposed synoikos Philistion (Choix 111) turned the second and another synoikos Teisimachos (Choix 113) into physicians (p. 108 n. 139), even though he was a carpenter. Elis would be a better example than Olympia (p. 122), because the latter was not a city, and was not even a proper settlement before Proto-Byzantine times (idem, p. 178). Attalus II is not the father, but the brother of Eumenes II (p. 125); the description of Olympia with statues of him is due to Pausanias, not to Plutarch (p. 148); Aemilius Paullus appropriated the base of Perseus for his statue after the victory at Pydna in 168 bce (p. 156).

For the list of honours given by Delphi or the Amphictyony one important point is that you cannot give a privilege not belonging to you (p. 44): a federal Aetolian decree about ateleia explained this fact clearly (Choix d'inscriptions de Delphes 105). The Delphic sanctuary was at the same time a local one (civic ritual, administration of the oracle), an Amphictyonic one (management of Apollo's fortune), a common sanctuary (Pythia as games belonging to the periodos) and an oracle everybody (Greek or Barbarian) could consult. The different scales of religious life had consequences on Delphic habits: because theoroi were citizens from Delphi, the organisation of the theorodokoi-network depended on the city, the only one in a position to give theorodokia.

Let us hope that the publication of this stimulating book, which raises a lot of questions about the honours in Delphi, will accelerate the completion of CID 6, making the work of researchers easier, just as CID 5 has recently boosted studies about slavery and manumission with new approaches.