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This chapter examines the extensive Delian epigraphic record (proxeny and other honorific decrees, references to crowns and other honours as these appear in the Delian accounts), in order to reconstruct the Delian network of honours. The focus is proxeny decrees, because of their significantly large number. The chapter discusses the issues of audience and purpose of publication of decrees. Using the ethnic names of the honorands as the basis of the study, it shows that the network of honours was geographically immense, with the southern Aegean as the primary region of local interaction, and with specific clustering beyond this primary region. This character of the network may be related to Delos’ insularity, on one hand, and the presence of a large regional sanctuary, on the other.

The chapter juxtaposes about thirty inscriptional and literary sources purportedly from Demades’s lifetime (although the book suggests dating some of the literary sources to later times) with almost 250 references in the literary texts of different genres from the mid-first century B.C. to the late Byzantine empire, revealing a gap of nearly 300 years between the death of Demades and the time in which most of the available literary evidence about his politics, character, looks, and oratory was produced. Contradictions between inscriptional and literary sources, and between references in literary texts, cast doubts on both the credibility of the literary evidence about Demades and the suggested criteria for establishing its authenticity. The chapter proposes to explain his contradictory image as an artificial rhetorical construct that served the educational and social needs of the Greek-speaking intellectual élite during Roman and Byzantine times, long after Demades’s death.

The aim of this chapter is to clarify the religious identity of the cities of the Peloponnese in the period between the first century BC and the first century AD. The documentary basis of this research consists of the honorific inscriptions which preserve the eulogies dedicated by the cities to their benefactors and help us describe how religious identities are constructed. These documents clearly reveal the desire to advertise the generosity of the benefactors within the religious space, in order to thank them for enabling the smooth functioning of religious life. This concerted celebration of the generosity of the elites reveals, on the one hand, the impact of a restricted social group on the civic body and on the other, the desire to conform to the most traditional euergetic models, thereby assuring a new civic order based on moral and religious values

The inscription IG V.2, 515 is revisited in order to explore the building activity at the sanctuary of Lykosoura in the Roman period. It is an honorific decree for one of the aristocrats of Megalopolis, Xenarchos son of Onesikrates, for his benefactions for the city and the sanctuary. The examination of the buildings ascribed to his generosity and that of the material remains at the site help us understanding the topographical developments of the sanctuary as much as the ritual changes. Financing and managing cult activity reflected both personal ambitions and political aspirations of the highest ranks of Greco-Roman society and culminated in the introduction of the imperial cult at Megalopolis, with the result of further strengthening the ties between Rome and the Greek periphery.