Current thinking views the ancient cultures of the Mediterranean as highly interconnected. This contrasts with late twentieth-century ideas of either geographically separate regions or more developed centers that dominated less complex peripheral societies. A major inspiration for the present approach is a post-processual understanding of the complex dimensions of consumption. Elite burial goods at Lefkandi ca. 1100–825 BCE illustrate how imports were used in status strategies. In the eighth century BCE, there is a decrease in valuable grave goods as dedications of imported luxury items in public sanctuaries became the preferred means of elite display. Current views also reflect postcolonial understanding of non-indigenous settlements as sites of hybridity and inbetweenness, not the imposition of a colonizing ethnicity on local identities but new cultural syntheses. Examples include a large number of the early so-called Greek colonies. A recently excavated example is L’Amastuola in Apulia, an indigenous settlement of the late eighth century where Greeks came to live in the early seventh century.

Barbara Strozzi dedicated two of her music prints, Cantate, ariette, e duetti (Opus 2, 1651) and Sacri musicali affetti (Opus 5, 1655), to the Austrian Habsburgs, which raises questions about the nature of her relationship to the powerful imperial family. This essay places her prints into the context of the Habsburg courts and examines textual and paratextual elements of the prints to suggest reasons why she may have chosen to dedicate them to the Habsburgs. It argues that the dedications served different purposes but that both of them ultimately served as publicity for the composer herself, in that she used a connection to the Habsburgs to help shape her public image.

The seven surviving printed collections of Strozzi’s vocal music (out of eight) have been well enough studied for their musical contents, but less so as bibliographical objects in the context of production methods that were increasingly ill-suited to the repertory in terms of format and typography. When viewed in this light, some of them are very odd indeed. Extreme examples are her opp. 5 (1655) and 8 (1664), which must have undergone some significant intervention during the printing process itself, chiefly – I suggest – because in each case, Strozzi identified a dedicatee in midstream, and changed her plans accordingly. My broader point is that any music print demands close examination in terms both of how it was put together, and of what it might reveal about the (now lost) manuscript sources on which it was based. But in Strozzi’s case, this also raises questions about her intentions in printing her music in the first place.

It has often been said Barbara Strozzi’s dedication of each of her printed books of music to a different patron demonstrates her lack of success in finding stable support. A careful examination of the system of dedications leads to a different conclusion. The main function of a dedication was to obtain the gradimento, or appreciation, of the dedicatee for the gift of the book, which would be expressed, almost always, in financial terms, as a gift to the author of cash or valuables. In agreeing to this exchange, the dedicatee also gained a reputation as a patron of the arts, but even more so as an exemplar of generosity. Strozzi’s dedications, therefore, demonstrate success in obtaining the approval of a series of important patrons.

Debussy’s later mélodies present a fascinating variety, bound together by a deep allegiance to the French language and poetic tradition. From the Wagner-drenched Cinq mélodies de Charles Baudelaire, with their refrains and sonnet forms, to the exacting medieval rondels and ballades of his Trois chansons de France and Trois ballades de François Villon, Debussy measured his text-setting against strict forms. In between these cycles, meanwhile, the composer embraced the contemporary prose poem, both in his settings of Pierre Louÿs and his own texts for Proses lyriques and Nuits blanches. A striking feature of these later cycles is the strong preference for three-song sets, a form that resonates with the resurgence of the triptych in French painting. Debussy’s dedications to friends and skilled amateur singers show that he intended these sophisticated musical-poetic works for a close circle of connoisseurs.

This chapter explores the personal dimension of Greek religion through the archaeological evidence for votives in Archaic and Classical Greece. Dedications serve as a prime example of how ancient worship could simultaneously be personal, civic, individual and collective. They point to how these aspects can and should be studied together to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of how people communicated with the gods. Traditionally, small dedications have been more closely associated with the individual, while large dedications (e.g. statues) are frequently studied as civic monuments. Through two case studies – textile dedications at Brauron and korai on the Acropolis – the chapter breaks down these divides. We consider the varying ways in which we can define ‘personal’ in relation to different types of dedications and in relation to different aspects of the dedicatory act. Using a combination of embodied, sensorial, emotional, theological and experiential perspectives, the chapter shows how worshippers used dedications to negotiate the relationship between personal engagement with the divine and their understanding of the communal aspects of religion.

Derval Conroy concludes the focus in the collection on the seventeenth century with an examination of the printed text. The numerous accompanying elements included in printed plays – peritexts – were key to the reader’s reception, argues Conroy. Concentrating on two of these, dedications and prefaces/addresses, and in the light of recent scholarship regarding theatre and female agency – women as protagonists, dramatists, readers, spectators and patrons – Conroy accounts for the vital role played by peritexts in the economy of exchange, patronage, criticism and creation which characterized the early modern theatre world. After an examination of Françoise Pascal’s titlepages, her chapter focuses on how dedications to women validated women’s roles as cultural agents, creating spaces for the female reader–spectator–critic. Consideration is then given to prefaces by the women dramatists Françoise Pascal, Mme Ulrich, Catherine Bernard and Marie-Anne Barbier, and how they use these printed spaces to defend their work, their foray into the public space of playwriting, or more broadly their dramatic vision.

Nobody hates like a Greek neighbour does, to paraphrase Simon Hornblower. But did this reflect a genuine inimical attitude, or are there more layers to commemorative practices? An analysis of the neighbourly commemorative practices reveals a different reality. Looking at dedications, festivals and literary sources provides a more nuanced insight. Rather than a preference for Panhellenic arenas to propagate a warring rivalry to the largest audience, local venues and spaces were preferred. The thinking behind this localised commemoration are the intentions to strengthen local cohesion vis-à-vis a known ‘other’, in this case the neighbouring polity. Dedications at sanctuaries like Olympia or Delphi were inspired by a desire to proclaim credentials for leadership over all of Greece, rather than stress the localised interactions. Often these were made with or in relation to the Spartans, meaning these sanctuaries provided a different audience for other goals. This becomes clearest by looking at a local sanctuary, the Amphiareion at Oropos. Here both polities aimed to promote their ownership by mostly targeting local audiences. This example demonstrates the potential of contested sanctuaries for understanding local rivalries and commemorative practices and how they acted as mirrors for neighbourly relations.

Pater’s individual volumes of essays were republished and reprinted many times in the years following his death. The books passed from hand to hand, and entered the second-hand market, often featuring brief inscriptions which indicate that they were proffered as gifts, in addition to more revealing marks of ownership comprising underlinings and marginal annotations. This postscript considers a small sample of such books, helpful in illustrating the diversity and orientation of Pater’s posthumous readership. Ranging from an early copy of Appreciations bought as a schoolboy by an eminent English scholar to a pocket edition of the same work presented to a prospective Oxford student, these books testify to the continuing appeal of Pater’s writings. An underlying theme to be followed is the vexed question of Pater’s perceived relevance to the study of English literature while the subject itself was acquiring its institutional framework in British universities. Some indications of Pater’s American readership, and his appeal to the more flexible curricula of the ‘new universities’ of the 1960s, are also relevant to the context under consideration here.

The surviving collection of Catullus’ poems evidently derives from a parchment codex edition created probably in the second century AD. This chapter argues that it combined seven previously separate libelli – (1) poems 2–14, (2) poems 14b–53, (3) poem 61, (4) poem 62, (5) poem 63, (6) poem 64, (7) poems 65–116 – that had been designed as Catullus’ self-chosen body of work from 56 to early 54 BC, that is, from the start of his poetic career to the point where his brother’s death changed everything. Poem 1 was a personalized dedication of one particular copy, and poems 54–60, not intended for publication, were added by the owner of one particular copy. The first libellus was the Passer Catulli referred to by Martial, the second was introduced by a poem set in a bookshop. The ‘long poems’ were separate libelli, but their order is probably the poet’s own. Early in 54 BC, persuaded by Caesar to abandon direct abuse and invective, Catullus turned to writing for the stage.

This chapter surveys the major Athenian inscriptional genres as well as their placement and distribution over time, and attempts to convey what it might have meant to a passerby to experience the ‘inscribed’ city.

The chapter focuses on the initial circulation of texts in written form. It asks how female authors promoted the publication of their own works in manuscript and print, showing how women copied these works or had them copied and how they gradually became more confident in entering the public world of print publication. It considers how women in the role of patrons promoted the circulation of manuscript and printed texts composed by others, mainly by men. It then shows to what extent and why women were chosen to play another kind of role in the print publication of texts, by acting as dedicatees for authors, editors and publishers.