Anna Komnene

Anna Komnene(or Comnena, Komnene is the Greek for the family name, Komnena its feminine form) was born two years after her father, Alexius, had made himself, not very legitimately, Roman emperor at Constantinople. As Alexius' first-born, she was soon betrothed to the son of an earlier emperor, the "rightful heir to the throne." In 1092 the engagement was broken off, and Anna's younger brother was made heir. But it was only after the death of the "rightful heir" that she was married, in 1097, to Nicephorus Bryennius, the son of a rival of Alexius, with his own claim to the throne. In a will she wrote after her father's death in 1118, Anna said that she had married Bryennius only to please her parents, but she then went on to praise him; at any rate, the couple remained married for forty years and had four children. During this time she wrote some poetry, but only brief fragments are extant.

Anna's husband had written a history of some of the emperors before Alexius, so when Bryennius died in 1137, Anna began to write the history of her father's reign, the Alexiad. She had time to write, because after her father's death, she appears to have been involved in some kind of a plot against her brother John, the new emperor. The problem for historians is that the chief source of the story of the plot is a chronicler, Ioannes Zonaras, who wrote in the 1170s in the service of John's son; later writers simply repeated Zonaras' story. Whatever the reason, Anna was at some point sent off by her brother John to live with her mother at a convent which her mother had founded. John died in 1143, to be succeeded by his son Manuel; Anna remained at her convent. Her history of her father's reign seems to have been completed in 1148, but since the end of the manuscript is mutilated, it is hard to be sure.

A funeral oration on Anna Komnene was given in 1156 (although apparently not immediately after her death) by a classical scholar who had studied with her in her enforced retirement. He and others had worked with Anna at her convent on the study of Aristotle, Plato, Euclid, and Ptolemy, and of rhetoric and history.

As unbiased history, the biggest problem with the Alexiad is the relationship between its author and its subject. It has sometimes been called hagiography, and it is true that Anna greatly admired her father and her mother, Irene. Anna tries very hard to be objective, but she can find a good (or at least understandable) reason for almost everything her parents do. However, from the perspective given by 900 years, a reader can afford to be tolerant and simply enjoy her unquestioned ability to tell a good story.