[In the following excerpt, Sewter considers various critical evaluations of Anna, as well as Anna's strengths, defects, and self awareness.]

'The life of the Emperor Alexius has been delineated by a favourite daughter, who was inspired by a tender regard for his person and a laudable zeal to perpetuate his virtues. Conscious of the just suspicion of her readers, the Princess Anna Comnena repeatedly protests that besides her personal knowledge she had searched the discourse and writings of the most respectable veterans: that after an interval of thirty years, forgotten by, and forgetful of, the world, her mournful solitude was inaccessible to hope and fear; and that truth, the naked perfect truth, was more dear and sacred than the memory of her parent. Yet instead of the simplicity of style and narrative which wins our belief, an elaborate affectation of rhetoric and science betrays in every page the vanity of a female author. The genuine character of Alexius is lost in a vague constellation of virtues; and the perpetual strain of panegyric and apology awakens our jealousy to question the veracity of the historian and the merit of the hero….'

So wrote Edward Gibbon in the ninth volume of the Decline and Fall. Modern critics, less hasty in judgement and turgid in declamation, pay tribute to Anna's high intelligence and good education. Runciman protests that modern historians are too ready to belittle her work; Ostrogorsky refers to the Alexiad as a 'historical source of first importance'; Vasiliev says it is 'extremely important from the historical point of view'; Krumbacher that her memoirs remain 'one of the most eminent works of medieval Greek historiography'¹; Marshall that Anna is 'an outstanding figure among Byzantine historians'²; Hussey, more sympathetic, refers to her work as 'ma ture and markedly individual', the product of an unusually cultivated society. Now, nobody could deny that Anna was less than partial in the matter of her father, but there is a tendency now to acquit her of deliberate falsehood: her sins were sins of omission only—and the translator, who spends months, even years, in her company, has better opportunities than most of 'sensing' where she is failing to tell the whole truth; her discomfort is reflected in subtle changes of diction. She may not say that Alexius made a fool of himself in this or that situation, but one can feel the implication. Gibbon, no stranger himself to prejudice, censures her bias and treats her with scorn; maybe today's scholars are more understanding—their verdict is generally favourable, certainly not patronizing.

The Alexiad was not her only work. Like her father and her brother Isaac, she is said to have written poems; if it is true, they seem to have won no commendation. Some years ago Kurtz published the prologue to her Will, apparently written sometime during the interval between her father's and mother's death (1118-23).

Anna was born at dawn on a Saturday, 1 December in the seventh indication (1083), the morning after her father 'returned to the capital with the laurels of victory'. It was a happy moment for Alexius and Irene, disappointed though they must have been that the first-born was not a son. Anna was in fact the eldest of seven children (four daughters and three sons). Attempts have been made by some modern historians to prove that Alexius was unfaithful to his wife in these early years and seriously considered an alliance with the deposed Empress Maria—and there was some scandalous talk, which Anna quickly dismisses. But the family seems to have been remarkably united, at least while the children were young, except for one thing: Anna very soon grew to dislike her brother John. Her troubles began, she tells us, in her eighth year. She had been betrothed to Constantine Ducas, the Empress Maria's son and the rightful heir to the throne, and in the Byzantine way she had gone to live with her prospective mother-in-law. Constantine was treated with great generosity by Alexius and was allowed to share the privileges of an emperor; he was, of course, the junior partner, for at the time he must have been no more than a boy. Anna had every reason to hope that in due course she and young Constantine would follow Alexius and Irene on the throne. Whether Alexius never really intended the marriage to take place, or whether the feud between her grandmother, the formidable Anna Dalassena, and the Ducas family eventually made it impossible, we shall never know, but the engagement was broken off and Constantine's place as heir was taken by her brother John. The latter was then (1092) four or five years old, and from that moment Anna became his enemy. John was small, thin and dark-skinned—hardly a prepossessing child—but he was the emperor's eldest son. The Byzantines, who loved to give their rulers nicknames, called him Calo-Johannes, 'Handsome John', and in later life, as a beloved emperor and virtuous father of his people, he retained the name. Anna says little about him in the Alexiad, but that little betrays her enmity, and when John did become emperor she instigated a rebellion against him; it failed, and she was sent into a comfortable exile, fortunate to escape a worse fate.

However, let us return to Constantine. The young man, no longer a public figure, retired to his estate in the country, where we find him entertaining Alexius; relations between them were still most friendly and we are told that he was loved by Alexius as his own son. The plot of Nicephorus Diogenes (1094), which was known to Constantine's mother although she took no active part in it, must have ended for ever any hopes of reinstatement. He died soon after, certainly before 1097. In that year Anna married 'her Caesar', Nicephorus Bryennius—against her wishes, if we are to believe the prologue to her Will, for she declares that she agreed to the ceremony only to please her parents: she would have preferred to live unwed. Maybe Alexius arranged it all as a political move: Bryennius was the son of his old rival.³ Anyhow, the marriage proved to be happy enough; they had four children and lived together in harmony for forty years, until Bryennius contracted some illness on campaign with her hated brother and died in 1137 (he at least bore no grudge and served John faithfully). This husband of hers was a man of culture, a historian whose work is still extant and often studied for its valuable contribution to our knowledge of Botaniates' reign. If he was no great military commander (although clearly a brave one), he was a most persuasive and eloquent speaker: Alexius used his talents to win over Gregory Taronites, Bohemond and the Manichaean heretics (not always successfully, but obviously he had faith in Bryennius' oratory). His death and the loss of her parents finally embittered Anna: when she wrote the Alexiad (she was still engaged on the work in 1148) she was full of self-pity, a disappointed old woman. When she died we do not know.

Despite the underlying current of misery and her tendency to over-praise Alexius, the history makes good reading. Her narrative is vivid and, when the digressions are consigned to footnotes (as they are in this book, with the addition of 'A.C.'), fast-moving and interesting. Her character-sketches at their best are unforgettable (of Anna Dalassena, for example, or Bohemond, or Italus); nearly always they are shrewd and the princess clearly had a more than superficial acquaintance with human nature beyond the palace walls. She reminds us herself that she had led no cloistered existence. Of course she has her prejudices, like any historian worth his salt (only Polybius, I believe, was almost completely impartial—and nobody reads him from choice). She dislikes Armenians, loathes the Pope Gregory VII, is unfair to Mohammedans, despises the Latins in general and (somewhat reluctantly) Bohemond in particular. There is a curious love-hate in her account of him. She greatly admires physical beauty, but was not apparently much impressed by fine architecture. (In this she differs from Psellus, who delights in descriptions of magnificent buildings and their wonderful symmetry.)

She excels in her detailed accounts of machines or instruments, like the cross-bow and the various helepoleis invented by allies or enemies. This was unusual in a woman, but Anna had a catholic education and was interested in science (in the narrow sense of the word). Like Psellus, she had studied medicine and was considered good enough to act as arbiter at the doctors' conference held when Alexius was on his death-bed. She knew something of astrology—enough to respect its most famous exponents; but she refused to accept the claim that the stars could in any way influence human destiny. Her religion was strictly orthodox and utterly sincere. Miracles, angels and demons are frequently mentioned, and quotations (not invariably accurate) from the Holy Scriptures are numerous; she alludes to certain superstitious beliefs, too, but mostly without comment. One has the impression that her Christian faith was based on reason and genuinely free of medieval superstition; her father, the 'thirteenth apostle', no doubt saw to it that his family eschewed all heresies. In this respect Anna is incredibly cruel; there is nothing charitable in her abhorrence of heretics. The gloating triumph in her account of Basil's death by burning is really horrible. To her the Bogomils are indeed devils incarnate.

Anna was well aware of the importance of her work. It was something more than a record of the Comnenian revival and the triumph of Byzantine arms; it vindicated the old mores before the rot set in. With the reign of Alexius there was a return to order and discipline, not only in the physical sense but also through the spiritual life of East Rome. At least that is how she saw it. In an age of cynicism and denigration it is perhaps no bad thing to be reminded that not all rulers are corrupt: Alexius was no plaster saint; he was cunning and 'versatile' (in the Odyssean fashion), at times harsh and uncompromising, a bit of a hypocrite, maybe, but essentially he was a good man with honourable intentions, certainly courageous and mindful of his duty to God and man. Anna's history has justly been described as 'the remarkable account of a remarkable man'.

But, of course, nothing in this world is perfect. Anna has her defects. Her geography is vague; there are difficulties in chronology, and in general she avoids precision in dates or even avoids them altogether; there are anomalies and contradictions (mostly in minor details); there are lacunae in the text, where she failed to give names (perhaps through forgetfulness, or lack of revision, or because, like Psellus, she prefers occasionally to tantalize the reader); her battle scenes are the least impressive passages in the history, and the famous parataxis, the emperor's new formation which so amazed Manalugh, seems to us nothing more than the ancient hollow square, or something so intricate as to be unworkable. There are many unanswered questions: Why did Maria adopt Alexius? How did a court eunuch prevent her remarriage and what were the timely words of wisdom he imparted to her? Why are we not told of Anna Dalassena's death? Who were the ungrateful persons Anna would dearly love to mention, but refrains from doing so? Who was the 'third cause' of the emperor's gout, the mysterious somebody who never left him? What was the true story of Alexius' last hours?

More than anything else in her writing, I suppose, the modern reader misses the evidence of a sense of humour. She derives a certain grim amusement from the predicament of Bohemond in his coffin; and the tiny Scyth leading in chains a gigantic Frank perhaps caused her to smile; but she completely lacks the light, subtle humour of Psellus and many other Byzantine writers. Tears came more easily to Anna than laughter.

Yet when all is said the Alexiad is eminently readable, a document more urbane, more vivid, more inspiring than any produced by her Latin contemporaries in the West.

Let her speak now for herself.

Notes

¹Geschichte der byzantinishen Litteratur, p. 276.

² Baynes and Moss (eds.), Byzantium, p. 232.

³ While it is usual now to assume that the Caesar Nicephorus Bryennius (Anna's husband) was the grandson of the pretender, there is some doubt and I have followed Zonaras, who definitely states that he was a son. We know from the History of Michael Attaliates (Bekker, pp. 53-4) that another Bryennius rebelled in 1056 and was duly blinded; Zonaras, xviii, 2, confirms this fact, although he gives the date 1057. It may be that this man was the Caesar's grandfather; his father, Nicephorus Bryennius the elder, lost his eyes after the rebellion against Botaniates. See Anna's note Bk X, n. 13. Buckler discusses the matter briefly (p. 33). Much depends on the interpretation of one Greek word which can mean either descendant or son.