Eustathii Archiepiscopi Thessalonicensis Commentarii ad Homeri Odysseam

Johann Gottfried Stallbaum (1793-1861) published Eustathii Archiepiscopi Thessalonicensis Commentarii ad Homeri Odysseam between 1825 and 1826. It contains the Greek text of Eustathius of Thessalonica’s twelfth-century commentary on Homer’s Odyssey. Volume 2 (1826) contains books 12-24 of the commentary. Eustathius was not an original writer but compiled extracts of texts from much earlier Greek authors and commentators. As archbishop of Thessalonica and a native of Constantinople, he had access to important libraries rich in manuscripts containing Homeric scholia and many books and treatises no longer extant today. Eustathius’ commentary preserves many otherwise lost extracts from writers such as Aristarchus of Samothrace, Zenodotus of Ephesus, Athenaeus, and Aristophanes of Byzantium. Stallbaum’s edition is based on the Editio Romana of Majoranus (1542-1550). His revised and corrected version has been the most widely used edition for well over a century. It is an important work of nineteenth-century classical scholarship.