Demetrios of Skepsis lived around 180 BC. He is a native from Skespis, a small town in the Troad (modern Turkey). He is know for having written a huge comment on the Troad (ὁ Τρωικὸς διάκοσμος) where he gives a detailed analysis of the links between the places in the landscape of the Troad and the names mentioned mainly in the Catalogue of the Trojan of the Iliad (2, 816-877).
Some of the fragments preserved give details form other places outside the Troad and we can believe that he has written on other geographical places too, especially those mentioned in the Catalogue of the Ships, giving the names of the Achaean warriors (2, 494-759).
His comments have been used by several ancient authors as important source for the Troad. Among these authors the most important is Strabo (1st BC-1st AD) in Book 13 of his Geographica.Some of the fragments are also quoted by Athenaeus in his Deipnosophistai (around 200 AD).

5 Responses to “Biographical details about Demetrios”


  1. 2 toasty redhead May 14, 2011 at 8:04 am

    Thank you for a great post.

  2. 3 Peter from London May 4, 2019 at 9:40 am

    I am very much looking forward to the publication of ‘Demetrios of Scepsis and His Troikos Diakosmos’ later this month and I wish it every success. Some years ago now I was fortunate enough to have enjoyed 3 protracted sojourns in the Troad based at Assos and using Strabo, Walter Leaf and J Cook as my guide saw as much as I possible. I went to Scepsis looking for remains of Demetrios’s library purely on the basis that while unlikely to find anything I would never know unless I tried. Needless to say I drew a blank.

  3. 4 Malisa Rodberg August 19, 2019 at 7:14 pm

    WOW just what I was looking for. Came hhere by searching for where


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