Ancient scholarship had many faces, but most have faded away over time.
Demetrios of Scepsis is one of the more shadowy of these lost figures,
best known for his commentary on the Trojan Catalogue in Book 2 of the
Iliad. Alexandra Trachsel's work represents the first treatment
dedicated to Demetrios of Scepsis in over a century. Because of the
incomplete transmission of Demetrios's work, Trachsel necessarily
focuses on the way later readers understood the ancient author's
engagement with the Homeric text. Indeed, modern scholars have access to
Demetrios's analysis of the Trojan Catalogue only through their
readings.
Trachsel's work offers a thorough analysis of the ancient and modern
reactions to Demetrios's research into the Homeric text and the Trojan
landscape, and it revisits the ongoing debate about the setting for
Homer's Trojan poem. Trachsel also provides new evidence about the
impressively wide range of other topics Demetrios's work may have
contained.