Dulces ante omnia Musae. Essays on Neo-Latin Poetry in Honour of Dirk Sacre is the very first collection of articles ever to be published about the fascinating phenomenon of Neo-Latin verse composition from its very beginning in Italian Renaissance humanism until its modest but important revival in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries - and even beyond. The editors have attracted both young and promising scholars and internationally recognized authorities to write specific case studies which will shed light on the rich diversity of scholarly approaches currently prevailing in the field of Neo-Latin poetical studies, as well as highlight both continuities and discontinuities in the writing and publishing of Latin verses from the fifteenth until the twenty-first centuries. This volume is dedicated to Dirk Sacre, professor emeritus of Neo-Latin at KU Leuven who, apart from writing numerous articles on Neo-Latin poets from Italy and the Low Countries in early modern times, has contributed more than anyone else in exploring the vast territory, until recently largely neglected and uncharted, of modern and late modern Latin verse compositions.