SOURCE: Anna Comnena: A Study, Oxford University Press, 1929, 558 p.

[In the following excerpt, Buckler summarizes the Alexiad, particularly with regard to Anna's personality and tendency towards self-pity and her access to sources. Buckler proclaims that Anna is an engaging writer.]

General Remarks

It is a well-accepted fact that Byzantine history has never, till within the last forty or fifty years, received at the hand of historians either adequate or just treatment. When Oman wrote his Byzantine Empire in 1892 for the Story of the Nations series, he thought it necessary to state that he was endeavouring 'to tell the story of Byzantium in the spirit of Finlay and Bury, not in that of Gibbon'. It is indeed to Gibbon's scorn of the Eastern Empire and all its works, as outlined in Chapter XL VIII of his Decline and Fall, that most English readers owe their knowledge, or rather ignorance, of that important period covering over a thousand years. He wrote of its annals as a 'tedious and uniform tale of weakness and misery', and for nearly a century even scholars were willing to take those same annals at his valuation. Krumbacher, in his Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur,¹ says that for a long time literature 'dem Byzantismus meist feindselig gegenüberstand'. Diehl, in his Études Byzantines, has traced the growing interest in the subject, with the Byzantinische Zeitschrift (started 1892) taking and keeping the lead. But even now, it may fairly be claimed that Byzantine writers have not yet attained to their proper place in the world of letters. To them and to their careful study we owe for one thing the preservation of classical texts, whose dispersal in 1453 has been reckoned as a chief cause of the Renaissance. But for them again the history of much of the Middle Ages would be a blank. Yet many well-educated people would find it hard to enumerate even a few of the historians, grammarians, theologians, and poets of the Eastern Empire.

In the case of the special subject in hand, most Englishmen would be driven to confess that their notion of Anna Comnena was taken from Gibbon or from Scott's Count Robert of Paris. No one has yet been found to translate her fifteen books into our language.² The Latin version of Migne's Patrologia Graeca is often harder, and that in the Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae always duller, than the Greek original. The only French rendering, done by Cousin, Président de la Cour des Monnaies to Louis XIV, and appreciatively read, it is interesting to note, by Madame de Sévigné, dates from 1675, and is as we might expect full of inaccuracies. In German we have a very much condensed translation in the great Schiller's Allgemeine Sammlung historischer Mémoires vom 12^ten Jahrhundert bis auf die neuesten Zeiten. Italy has the work of G. Rossi, published in 1849, and Denmark that of Hovgaard, published in 1879-82. But England so far has nothing, not even studies on her and her work such as those of E. Oster³ and F. Chalandon.⁴

Yet in herself and her times and her writings Anna Comnena is surely one of the most interesting figures known to us. If Sappho excites our admiration as the first woman poet, Anna is the first woman historian. If the First Crusade has a perennial charm for our minds, in her Alexias we can compare the only contemporary Greek account of it with those of the Latin Chroniclers. If we once realize that the remarkable dynasty of the Comneni kept the Eastern Empire from dissolution during over 100 years, where else can we get such a detailed picture of its foundation? As Diehl has truly said, in his Figures Byzantines, 'Pour la psychologie du personnage l'Alexiade demeure un document de première importance, et d'une façon plus générale c'est un livre absolument remarquable'.⁵ Remarkable indeed, when we think of Anna's contemporaries. The 'leaders of the pilgrims', as she calls the Crusading Counts, could only make their mark on the treaty between Alexius and Bohemund, while their names had to be 'written in by the hand of the Bishop of Amalfi dear to God'.⁶ Yet at the same period Anna Comnena could quote Homer and the Bible copiously and appositely, draw telling analogies from Greek history true or mythical, and handle terms of theological philosophy with at least perfect assurance. She herself in her Preface makes this claim: 'I desire to expound in this my writing the deeds of my father … being not unversed in letters, not unpractised in rhetoric, … having well mastered the rules of Aristotle and the dialogues of Plato, and having furnished my mind with the quadrivium of sciences' (i.e. Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, Music). Her military descriptions may show inadequate technical knowledge; possibly, as is suggested by the late Miss A. Gardner in an unpublished paper on 'Anna Comnena and her Surroundings', they may be coloured by Homeric recollections of the Trojan War. Yet Oman, in his Art of War,⁷ states that she 'has, for a lady, a very fair grasp of things military', and to the ordinary reader her battles are usually vivid and always intelligible; while her explanations as to liquid fire and the crossbow are among the loci classici for the two subjects. Her chro nology is not impeccable, but it compares favourably with that of much later writers, even Froissart. We may dismiss many of her statements in religious matters as prejudiced or superstitious, but it demands some effort even now to wrestle as she does with Hypostasis and Henosis, or with the false doctrines of Monophysites and Bogomiles. Modern doctors might not consider her competent to act as 'umpire' in their discussions over diagnosis and treatment, yet one of them, Dr. H. E. Counsell, has said, in a letter which he has given kind permission to quote, 'The cause of Alexius' death is perfectly evident from the wonderfully graphic account of his daughter'.

Western Europe in Anna's day was torn with fighting and dark with ignorance. When we read the Alexias we find ourselves in a pleasant, cultured, and courteous world, where Court ceremonial is stately yet not excessive, where family affection is at least in theory greatly esteemed, and where, though games and sports and banquets have their place and fighting is often unfortunately necessary, yet learning and literature are man's truest and highest interests. It is a world we feel where, if only the wicked would cease from troubling by conspiracies and wars, rest of a very dignified and refined kind might be achieved. The writings of the Fathers form the Empress's chief delight; Nicephorus Bryennius 'my Caesar' is as great in learning as in charm, and Alexius turns with gusto from material strife to spiritual, from fighting Turks or Franks to confuting heretics out of 'the Sacred Books'. Anna scorns as 'barbarians' all other nations but her own; had she not good cause?⁸

…..

Scope of the Alexias

(a) PREFACE AND BOOKS I-VII

This brings us at last to the work with which her name is almost exclusively associated, and which throws the literary attainments of her father and brother completely into the shade. In length it exceeds the History of Thucydides; in interest it falls short only of the very highest.

In considering it, and the moral and intellectual standards of its writer as therein shown, we need scarcely begin with a detailed account of the fifteen books, such as is given in the previously mentioned studies by Oster and Chalandon. Yet something may perhaps be gained from the briefest possible summary, especially as in passing we may point out various topics to be studied later.

The Alexias then is a Life of Alexius Comnenus, who was born we believe in 1056,⁹ ascended the Byzantine throne in 1081, and certainly died on August 15, 1118. In her Preface Anna strikes the key-note of her history. Having been 'nurtured and born in the purple' she wishes to hand down to posterity her imperial father's great deeds, 'not meet to be delivered over to silence', and in so doing she is only continuing a work begun by her husband, Nicephorus Bryennius Caesar. These two beloved names wake such sad memories that she weeps over their loss and ends her Preface, having introduced into these few pages one quotation from John of Epiphania, one from Polybius, one from Sophocles, two from Euripides, one from Homer, one allusion to the Bible, one to mythology, four to history, seven geographical names, and a great many long and recondite words. Melancholy adorned by learning has at the very outset marked the work for its own.

Book I tells of Alexius from his boyhood till the last months of the troubled reign of the Emperor Nicephorus Botaniates. The chronology at once shows a discrepancy with other sources which we shall discuss in full later: does Anna mean that her father was only fourteen at the time of the 'great campaign against the Persians' headed by Romanus Diogenes in 1070? Rather surprisingly she omits all details as to his ancestors, such as begin her husband's work, and goes straight to the biography. In his first military adventure, when sent by Michael VII against the 'Celt' Urselius in Asia Minor, Alexius displays no less than four of the qualities which his daughter always extols in him: persuasiveness of tongue, preference for devious methods and stratagems, readiness to make friends with any one (even an enemy) who will serve his turn, and clemency to fallen foes. In his second, when as Domestic of the Schools he goes out for Botaniates against Nicephorus Bryennius, the fight at Calaure gives the occasion for the first Anna's numberless battle-pictures, all more conscientious than inspired. It also allows Alexius to show and Anna to praise the wonderful bravery of which we hear so much. In the third contest, where a fresh would-be usurper Basilacius succumbs to his prowess, we are initiated into another secret of Alexius' character, his obedience to his mother.

The story then breaks off to describe the brutal ways in which Robert Guiscard rose to power in Italy, and his impious resolve to cross the Adriatic and attack the Eastern Empire, ostensibly as the champion of the deposed Michael VII. At this point, in speaking of Robert and of his daughter Helena, once betrothed to Anna's own fiancé Constantine Ducas, she shows two of her own deeply rooted qualities, true Byzantine disdain for any race not her own, and jealousy. Two other personal touches may also be noted. First, womanly and imperial modesty prevents Anna from retailing scandal, and to this principle she rigidly adheres throughout her fifteen Books. Secondly, the mention of the Pope rouses this daughter of the Orthodox Church to mock at what she considers his vain pretensions to supremacy.

Book II gives a vivid picture of the court intrigues which preceded Alexius' ursurpation (involving not only nobles and favourites but the Empress Maria herself), and his capture of Constantinople by bribing the garrison. Here for the first time we get an insight into the formidable if usually beneficent power of the imperial 'kinsmen', whether blood relations or connexions by marriage. Without the aid of his brother Isaac, his brother-in-law George Palaeologus, and his wife's grandfather John Ducas Caesar, to say nothing of his own vigorous and clever mother Anna Dalassena, Alexius would never have gained the throne. We also see Alexius for the first time practising on another brother-in-law Nicephorus Melissenus his favourite trick of 'keeping in suspense' any one likely to cause trouble. Finally we get a sinister glimpse into the power, venality, and turbulence of armies and fleets.

Book III opens in 1081 with the banishment to a monastery of the deposed Emperor Botaniates. Then follows the rather obscure story of conflict between the two great families of Comnenus and Ducas. The quarrel apparently raged round two questions: should Irene Ducas be crowned as well as her husband, and should the ex-Empress Maria remain in the Palace as her virtual rival in power? The Ducas family won on both issues, but in return for this victory they had to let Anna Dalassena replace the Patriarch Cosmas by a creature of her own, Eustratius Garidas. Wonderful pen-portraits of Maria, Alexius, and Irene enliven this part of the Book. Finally, in the Golden Bull appointing Anna Dalassena regent in her son's absence on campaigns, we get the first of the official documents which our historian professes to quote verbatim. It is followed by a long eulogy of her grand-mother for purity of morals, open-handedness, and piety, three virtues which the Alexias never fails to praise. The Emperor's penance for the sack of the capital on Maundy Thursday by his troops is also instructive in this connexion.

After a digression (prefaced by a long quotation from Psellus¹⁰ on a miraculous escape of her great-uncle the Emperor Isaac Comnenus, Anna turns to the lamentable military and financial condition of the Empire in 1081, and her father's manifold efforts to resist Turks on the East and Normans on the West. A second State document, a letter from Alexius to the King … of Germany, here proposes alliance and intermarriage, while a peace is patched up with the Turks, and Illyria strengthened against Robert by the dismissal of the disloyal governor of Durazzo. The new one chosen is Alexius' brother-inlaw, George Palaeologus, one of Anna's chief authorities.¹¹ For the ensuing campaign she had not only his reports, but those of a 'Latin envoy from the Bishop of Bari', who accompanied the Norman hosts, so her details at this point are peculiarly vivid, beginning with a fine description of the great storm that wrecked Robert's fleet and barely let him escape with his life to the eastern shore of the Adriatic.

Book IV gives us the siege of Durazzo by the Normans and their puppet, the bogus Michael VII. Alexius summons the Venetian fleet to his aid, and it defeats first Robert's son Bohemund and then Robert himself. In August 1081 the Emperor leaves Constantinople to collect forces, with which he proceeds by way of Thessalonica against the enemy. The Byzantines are severely defeated outside Durazzo, and the Emperor owes his life to his own valour and the miraculous agility of his horse.¹²

Book V opens with the loss of Durazzo to Robert by treason.¹³ Then we get the Emperor's drastic methods of raising money in Constantinople by taking Church property in the face of much clerical opposition, and Robert's enforced return to Italy to help the Pope against Alexius' new German ally. The Norman army is left to Bohemund, who captures many towns and twice defeats Alexius in battle,¹⁴ but is finally driven back to Italy by a mutiny among his soldiers due to the Emperor's machinations. Alexius on re-entering Constantinople has the first of his triumphant contests with false doctrine, this time in the person of the neo-Platonic philosopher John Italus, an incident which gives us much insight into Anna's ideals of learning.

Book VI shows us the last Norman forces on imperial soil surrendering to Alexius and his crushing of the insurgent Manichaeans, by an act of treachery which ultimately caused the Patzinak War. For his spoliation of Church property he is obliged not only to justify himself before an assembly but to make handsome restitution.¹⁵ This is followed by the first of the many plots against him, hatched by unnamed 'picked men of the Senate and the leaders of the army', and barely punished by the Emperor, but the story soon returns to Robert Guiscard and his second crossing of the Adriatic. His campaign, chiefly important for having forced Alexius to make disastrous commercial concessions to the Venetian allies, is terminated by death at Cephallenia in the summer of 1085, and this provides Anna with the occasion for a dissertation on the astrology which had foretold it, and for a vivid character sketch of Robert. We are then carried back to 1 December 1083, and the story of Anna's birth, followed in a few years by those of a sister and a brother.

The rest of the Book is occupied first with the Turks, both their domestic quarrels and their struggles with the imperial forces, secondly with the initial Patzinak campaign. In the Turkish War various points of interest may be noted. Sacrilege is punished by demoniac possession; military and naval officers are not distinct but interchangeable; the Empire has never in theory abandoned its claim to a dominion extending from the Straits of Gibraltar to India. Alexius at this juncture blossoms forth as an 'apostle', ever burning to convert heretics and the heathen. As to the Patzinak War of 1086, to which we return from the Eastern events of 1092, it begins with defeat and disaster, and fresh troops are hurried to the front.

Book VII shows us Alexius fighting in person the next spring (1087). After an eclipse (identified by Chalandon¹⁶ as that of August 1, 1087) he is grievously defeated near Dristra, close to the Danube, being even forced to abandon his sacred banner. Providentially the newly arrived Comans quarrel about booty with their allies the Patzinaks, and Alexius seizes the occasion to come to terms with the latter. This inglorious peace, which Theophylact¹⁷ misrepresents as a triumph for the Empire, is of short duration, and the next campaign brings the loss of 300 of Alexius' beloved young Archontopules. The 500 Flemish horsemen who arrive at this crisis as mercenaries have to be sent at once to Asia Minor, where the Turk Tzachas had made himself an independent sovereign on the West coast, and had beaten the imperial forces on land and sea. John Ducas, Irene's brother, who had been recently successful against the Dalmatians, is dispatched to the Eastern scene of action, and then Anna turns her history back to Thrace and the Patzinaks, who have arrived within twenty leagues of the capital when winter stops the fighting. This Book has several points of minor interest. Over a certain Lake Ozolimne Anna makes a display of somewhat inaccurate learning; for all his defeats Alexius is praised as a second Alexander; twice over we find foreign soldiers of fortune betraying their employers' plans; and the Emperor first shows signs of physical weakness by having ague.¹⁸

(b) Books VIII-XV

Book VIII reopens the Patzinak campaign early in 1091. Alexius has a success at Choerobacchae, and the joke which he plays on his army, dressing up some of his soldiers like Scythian captives, throws light on the camaraderie between the sovereign and his men. An exceptionally severe winter causes another pause; then the Comans reappear and are bribed into alliance, and the Greek victory of Lebunium (April 29, 1091) results in the utter destruction¹⁹ of the whole Patzinak nation. Here we may observe how difficulties of commissariat, and especially of the water supply, play an important part in eleventh-century warfare. We are also treated by Anna, in her contrasting of Lebunium with Dristra, to a characteristic moral, recalling the old classical teaching as to the inevitable punishment of ὕβρις.

After the fight the Patzinak prisoners are murdered, and, though Anna is careful to exculpate her father, the deed causes a stampede among the Coman allies. Alexius sends their promised rewards after them, and for the time the Empire is freed from all 'Scythians', whether friends or foes. Alexius then returns to Constantinople and is beset by domestic troubles. Two plots, one of two foreign mercenary generals and the other of his own nephew John, now Governor of Durazzo, are discovered and pardoned, and the Book ends with the insubordinate behaviour of the Gabras family, a story which presents several points of interest. First we see that an appointment, even to virtual independence, in a distant town like Trebizond might be considered as hardly better than exile. Secondly, we have a marriage stopped because the bridegroom's father had taken for his second wife a cousin of the bride. Thirdly, we find the son of a formidable subject kept as hostage at the imperial court. Fourthly, medieval superstition comes out in the theft of a peculiarly sacred relic on which to swear. As to the whole Book, we may say that it makes us forcibly realize how precarious was Alexius' tenure of empire, when he could not count on loyalty or even respect from his generals, his kinsmen, or the members of his own household.

Book IX takes up the Turkish War from Book VII. The three months' siege of Mitylene ends in victory for John Ducas, and the Greek and Turkish leaders make a treaty which both promptly break. Throughout the campaign indeed intrigue and falsehood are rampant on both sides. John's subsequent suppression of revolts in Crete and Cyprus draws forth from Anna two significant remarks. She expresses aristocratic scorn for the Cypriote rebel who 'could not even ride', and notes as something exceptional that Alexius sent to the island as assessor of taxes a man 'not of distinguished birth, but bringing abundant testimony of just dealing and incorruptibility and courtesy'. We also notice how the Emperor, though not present in the field, kept all the military reins in his hands; John Ducas would never have conquered at Mitylene but for his brother-in-law's instructions.

We now go back to Europe, and learn how Alexius in 1093 tried by diplomacy and war to repress the Dalmatians, victorious under Bolcanus over John Comnenus, the Governor of Durazzo. The Emperor's march is delayed by the conspiracy of Nicephorus Diogenes, son of the Emperor Romanus Diogenes, an occurrence narrated in a series of peculiarly vivid pictures. Anna gives us an unwonted wealth of detail about this youth, his birth in the purple, his ingratitude to Alexius culminating in two if not three abortive attempts at assassination, the Emperor's vain efforts to win back his affections, and the final arrest of Diogenes and all his accomplices. Once more we have Alexius' clemency impressed on us. He fears for his life at the hands of he infuriated crowd, but he adheres to his customary methods. The suspicions against the ex-Empress Maria are hushed up; no severer punishment than prison, banishment, and confiscation of goods is inflicted on the ring-leaders, and for the rest a general amnesty is proclaimed. The Emperor is free to proceed against the Dalmatians, who promptly submit.

Book X is in many ways the most remarkable of all. First we get the Christological controversy between Alexius and the heretic Nilus; next, the incursions (successfully resisted by the Emperor in person) of the Comans led by a Greek rebel impersonating another son of Romanus Diogenes; thirdly, a brief appearance of Alexius in Nicomedia; and finally the supreme interest of the First Crusade. Various small incidents may be noted. In the Coman campaign we get the Emperor's first use of Sacred Lots as a sort of oracle, we see how the inroads of barbarians were facilitated by the disloyalty of towns in the Empire, and on the other hand we find an important fortress committed to Alexius' former enemy Nicephorus Bryennius, whose blinding had not incapacitated him from military usefulness in action as well as in council. At the end of it we may note the untiring energy of Alexius, who, after pursuing the retreating foe, crosses in the heat of summer to superintend fortifications near Nicomedia.

But, as was said above, the climax of the whole work to modern readers is the coming of the First Crusade to Constantinople, with the behaviour of the leaders to Alexius and his demands for homage from them. This will be discussed at length later. At present three incidents may be singled out for special notice. One is a naval fight between the imperial fleet and a Count Prebentzas,²⁰ a fight memorable to us because in recounting it Anna minutely describes the Frankish cross-bow, and vigorously inveighs against the fighting priests of the Latin Church. The second is the battle outside Constantinople, when the Crusaders under Godfrey de Bouillon refuse to defer fighting from Holy Week till after Easter, and the accomplished archer Nicephorus Bryennius Caesar shoots so as not to kill. The third is the arrival at the capital of Anna's Prince of Darkness, the great Bohemund, and whereas in the Illyrian campaign of 1083 he had figured merely as Robert Guiscard's son and substitute, here and henceforward he dominates the whole scene, as the greediest, most unscrupulous, and also the cleverest of all the Franks. Finally, the oath of homage is taken by the principal chiefs including Godfrey and Bohemund, and the Book ends with the departure into Asia Minor of all the Frankish hosts, followed by Alexius himself.

Book XI carries on the story of the First Crusade. Nicaea is besieged, and after much fighting the garrison secretly admits the imperial envoy Butumites. Strong in possession of the citadel he is able to give commands to the Crusaders, and he induces all those who have not already done so to swear fealty to Alexius at Pelecanus.²¹ Alexius now speeds the Crusaders on their way, sending Taticius partly to support them with his forces, partly to see that captured towns are, according to the Crusaders' oath, handed back to the Empire. After various battles the Franks and Greeks reach Antioch and besiege it. Bohemund now resumes his role of arch-villain, frightening Taticius home by invented dangers, intriguing with the Turkish garrison, and finally seizing the town for himself in violation of his allegiance to Alexius. The finding of the Sacred Lance²² gives the Crusaders courage to drive away a relieving army of Turks. They leave Bohemund installed as governor at Antioch, and proceed to Jerusalem, where Godfrey is made king. Anna then returns to tell of her father, whose attempt to march after the Franks is first delayed and then cut short by fear of the Turks. Her interest is subsequently focussed on St. Gilles, Alexius' one friend among the Crusaders, who after taking Laodicea and other places hands them over to imperial agents while he besieges Tripoli. But Tancred seizes Laodicea for himself and his uncle Bohemund; Godfrey dies and is succeeded at Jerusalem by his brother Baldwin; St. Gilles conducts a fresh body of Crusaders from Constantinople Eastwards across the Halys,²³ meets with disaster, returns to the siege of Tripoli, and dies. Then the long brewing animosity between Alexius and Bohemund comes to a head, each accusing the other of broken oaths. Their troops fight in Cilicia, and the Pisan fleet attacks the Greek, which gains a victory with new and specially formidable fire-ships.²⁴ Later on Cantacuzenus besieges Laodicea from the sea in co-operation with a land force. The Book ends with the story, told of other heroes by other writers, of Bohemund's escape from Antioch to Corfu in a coffin on board ship, with a dead cock on his breast to give colour or rather smell to his deception.

These gruesome details agree with the general character of this part of Anna's history, to which the 'barbarous' Crusaders seem to impart a savage flavour. In this Book the new Governor of Smyrna is brutally stabbed by a man accused of theft, and his sailors in revenge sack the town, the captured daughter of the Turk Tzachas is paraded as an exhibit by the Greeks, Crusaders murder Greek priests and laymen who come out in procession to welcome them, storms and liquid fire make naval battles a hideous nightmare, the Greek fleet kills its prisoners, Pisan soldiers rush panic-stricken into the sea and are drowned; in no other single Book do we meet with such concentrated battle and murder and sudden death.

BookXII opens with Bohemund's successful attempts at raising up enemies in Italy against the Empire, while his nephew Tancred wins successes in Cilicia. Alexius, though crippled by gout which only his wife's rubbings can assuage,²⁵ at this point goes into camp at Thessalonica. Anna's usual praise of her parents is followed by the usual disclaimer of partiality, accompanied by the usual wealth of allusions, quotations, and high-sounding phrases.

We next have a short and rather confused account of Dalmatian affairs, and then Anna turns to the other and greater trials of the Emperor. First we have the plot of the four Anemas brothers, themselves nobles and aided by high military officers, with the rich senator John Solomon as their tool. The convicted ringleaders are with unwonted severity condemned to be blinded after being led in mock procession through the capital. At the last moment Alexius is moved by the prayers of his daughters and wife to grant a reprieve. The eyes of all are spared, but Michael Anemas is imprisoned in a tower where the captured rebel Gregory Taronites soon joins him. To him Alexius, possibly because his own sister had married into that family, shows even more than his usual forbearance.

From domestic troubles we pass to external. The Greek admiral-in-chief, Isaac Contostephanus, first fails to take Otranto held by Tancred's mother, and then by his cowardly desertion of his post allows Bohemund to cross with a huge fleet to Durazzo. The reception by Alexius of these sinister tidings gives him a chance to display heroic calm, and the Book ends on this note of pride.

Book XIII, the longest after Book XV and Book I, describes the great crisis of Alexius' career, his struggle against and treaty with Bohemund. At the start he is delayed five days by the plot of the Aaron brothers, who are finally banished and their mother also. Then the contest with Bohemund begins in earnest. Though hampered by famine and disease, the Norman beleaguers Durazzo for the whole winter, trying against it in succession a penthouse, a mine, and a wooden tower. The garrison holds out, and Alexius thinks he can best help them by stratagem, so he contrives that letters falsely incriminating some of Bohemund's principal men shall fall into the hands of their chief. It is not however till a vigorous new admiral-in-chief is appointed that Bohemund's supplies from Italy are cut off, and he is obliged to sue for peace to the Governor of Durazzo. Several small points in the first half of the Book deserve to be mentioned. Here, as in the Patzinak War, we find Greek generals parading their enemies' heads on spears; the part played by women in Byzantine intrigues may be noted;²⁶ and finally, in telling us of the deadly effect produced by the Greek archers on their foes, Anna gives a full and very interesting description of Norman armour.

Alexius now summons his enemy to come to him under a safe-conduct, and a long and curious account follows of the minute stipulations made by Bohemund as to hostages, complete silence about the past, and an honourable reception, involving many nice questions of etiquette. Finally the last chapter of the Book covers many pages, and gives the treaty between Alexius and Bohemund at wearisome length. Bohemund renews his oath of fealty, and among the places granted to him for life we find the great bone of contention Antioch, though this concession is mitigated by the Emperor's reserving the right to choose its Patriarch out of the clergy of St. Sophia. The covenant ends with an enumeration of all the holy objects visible and invisible by which Bohemund swore, and of all the signatory witnesses. The wide diplomatic relations of the Byzantine Empire are shown by the presence of a Papal envoy and Hungarian ambassadors.

Book XIV opens with the return to Italy and the death of the discomfited Bohemund. This leaves the stage clear for Alexius, who first deals vicariously but successfully with Asia Minor, and then through Butumites vainly tries to enlist the other Crusaders, especially Baldwin King of Jerusalem, against Tancred firmly established in Antioch. Meanwhile he himself is in the Thracian Chersonese, watching for any dangers to his Empire, whether from sea or land. First a Lombard fleet makes an abortive attack; next a rebel commandant is defeated, captured, and pardoned. Then a treaty is concluded by Alexius with envoys of the vanquished Sultan of Chorassan, but the next year war is resumed and the Emperor handles it in person in spite of gout. The history of his disease follows: Anna ascribes it first to an old accident at polo, next to the interminable standing necessitated by the interviews with garrulous Crusaders, then to anxiety over his Empire, and finally to the literal or figurative poisoning of his 'cup' attempted by some intimate enemy. The incidental pictures of Palace life, the weary courtiers, the patient Emperor, the vigilant Empress, make this passage one of the most admirable in the whole work. The campaign goes on, and finally the victory is such that all Constantinople rejoices. Anna now indulges in a lengthy digression, on the dangers from Scythians, Normans, Turks, and sea-pirates brought on the Empire by her father's predecessors. Next we get an interesting light thrown, first on the sources of her history, secondly on her woes real or imaginary, thirdly on the date at which she wrote this Book, i.e. in 1148 when she was already sixty-four or sixty-five.

She then turns to a threatened Coman invasion, which causes Alexius to hurry to Philippopolis. There while waiting for the foe he converts numberless Paulician heretics. Anna takes this occasion to display, first her orthodox views on doctrine and philosophy; next her acquaintance (not always accurate) with history and geography; thirdly her never-dying admiration for her 'apostolic' father, who may now be said to be at his zenith. The Comans retreat at the bare sound of his approach, and he founds for his converts a new city called after himself.

Book XV, the longest of all, leads us slowly down from the zenith to the nadir. First the Sultan of Iconium, Kilidj Arslan or Saisan, raids Asia Minor seven times and publicly mocks at the Emperor and his gout. When in his wrath Alexius crosses the straits and goes to Nicomedia, fresh sneers at his inactivity arise among his own followers, and Anna, while clinging to her claim of being an impartial historian, has to remind herself and us that discretion is the better part of valour and the mark of a good general. In the end the surpassing ingenuity of his καινὴ πᾳ̑ράτᾳ̑ξις, first worked out on paper and then put in practice, ensures the success of the Greek arms. The Emperor is able to bring all his booty, prisoners, and refugees safely back from Philomelium to his capital, and on the way thither to extract from the submissive Sultan favourable terms of peace, whereby the old boundaries of Turks and Greeks are restored as they were before the accession in 1067 of the ill-fated Romanus Diogenes. Thus the last campaign of Alexius closes in glory, and though it contains no strikingly dramatic incident, several acts of individual valour among his officers, to say nothing of courtesies exchanged between enemies, throw a sort of sunset glow over the whole. The passage on Turkish archery and tactics is interesting, and we are made vividly to realize the military problems produced by difficulties of getting provisions in a plundered land, by the supreme importance of keeping the horses in good condition, and by the sinister action of deserters. Above all, we feel deep sympathy for any humane general with sick women and dying men among his refugee camp-followers.

Once back in his capital, with a triumphal entry modestly avoided, Alexius turns to philanthropy, and we get a lively picture of the Orphanotropheion which he founds, or rather restores, on a large site encircling the Church of St. Paul. This institution contains orphans and their school, as well as disabled men (especially old soldiers) and infirm women, with attendants of both sexes. In connexion with the school, Anna pauses to deplore the neglect of literary study in favour of mere grammatical analysis, and dwells with complacency on her own excellent education. Next follows the most unpleasant episode in the whole work. A new doctrinal danger arises in the form of the Bogomile heresy, compounded of Paulicianism and Massalianism. The leader Basil is tricked into incrimi nating himself, and the Senate, Church, and Army all combine with Alexius in condemning him to be burnt in the Hippodrome, a proceeding described by Anna with ghoulish satisfaction. The other Bogomiles are partly converted and released, partly saved by the Emperor from popular lynching and imprisoned for life

After this Anna turns to her father's wonderful achievements in restoring the Empire and his modesty in not wishing them written down, and in conclusion comes one long vivid chapter recounting his last illness and death. This will be discussed at some length later…. For the present it is enough to say that if, as Chalandon and Oster believe, all the sentiment expressed is hypocritical and untrue, then this passage should surely rank as one of the masterpieces of fiction. There follows one last outpouring of lamentation over Anna's own 'rivers and streams of misfortunes', and the Book ends with the significant words, 'Let my story have an end, lest writing down my woes I should grow the more bitter'….

Hopes of Succession

Before we consider the characteristics of Anna Comnena as a historian, we shall do well to study her as a woman. The main facts of her life might be gathered at need from other writers, and in her general principles and ideals she is merely the product of her age, but her autobiographical touches supply us with the key to her individual character.

First, as to the ambition which her critics cast in her teeth. The 'bitterness' of which she herself is conscious in the very last word of her work must surely be attributed less to her griefs than to cheated hopes. As a child she had been taught to reckon on being Empress; she never was, and it soured her against her hated brother and successor John. But it is not necessary to assume that she contested the legitimacy of his claim, when once her betrothed, Constantine Ducas, son of the Emperor Michael, had departed this life, probably before she was of marriageable age.²⁸ She darkly hints at John's treachery²⁹ and heartlessness³⁰ as a son, and incompetence as a monarch,³¹ but the principle of heredity was too strong in her³² for her really to think that she and Nicephorus Bryennius had superior rights to the throne. If she disagreed with her husband's emphatic statement³³ that John stood next in the succession as soon as Constantine was dead, would she have referred readers so freely to his book as a supreme authority? If she did indeed conspire against her brother in the first year of his reign, some act of his may have seemed to her to justify his expulsion from the throne that he had been bound to inherit. She is arrogant, bitter, and jealous, she resents the fact that Constantine died and that John was ever born, or a husband, or the father of a son,³⁴ but she never suggests that he was not the legal δἱάδοχος,³⁵ and never hints that Irene preferred her daughter's claims before her son's.

At this point we will deal shortly with this question of hereditary succession, for it closely affects her story. Theoretically in the eleventh and twelfth centuries the senate and army still chose the emperor, while the people had to confirm their choice.³⁶ The patriarch of Constantinople 'as representing the electors but not the Church', usually crowned the new sovereign with the diadem.³⁷ In practice however the monarchs had long been able to bequeath their sceptre to sons real and adopted, having usually already associated them with themselves as coemperors. For one thing, as P. Grenier shows,³⁸ it was only Constantinople and the adjacent provinces of Thrace and Macedonia that took any interest in the choice of an emperor, and even there the selection of a patriarch was of far greater moment. Yet the being designated as successor by a still reigning emperor did not give a clear title in the face of a military coup d'état. Though Botaniates had chosen his sister's son Synadenus³⁹ to succeed him and also had an ἔγγονος of his own, he yet thinks it prudent to ignore this and send the following message to his formidable opponent Alexius: I am now an old and lonely man, possessing neither son nor brother nor any near⁴⁰ kinsman, and if thou desirest become thou my adopted son.'

When a new dynasty came in, it was always a case of usurpation backed up by the army. Thus, to take an instance from the Alexias itself, it is clear that when the Comneni revolt against Botaniates the determining factor in the choice between the two brothers as emperor is the will of the army.⁴¹ Alexius who is the younger is Grand Domestic of the West and his soldiers are at hand, so he is proclaimed in preference to Isaac, the elder, whose troops had presumably stayed behind in the East.⁴² Similarly it is reliance on his ἱκανὴ στρᾳ̑τιά that makes Nicephorus Melissenus hope (though vainly) to get half of the Empire.⁴³

But it is none the less true that the anarchy of the years 1057 to 1081 had by a revulsion of popular feeling given to the principle of inheritance by the eldest son (a principle born during the eighty odd years of the Isaurian dynasty and grown great during the two centuries, with six generations, of the Macedonian) a fresh chance of establishing itself. We find it prevailing in the twelfth century with more force than ever, and keeping its hold till the Empire fell in 1453. Anna herself considers that the throne belonged 'as a sort of inheritance from his grandfather and father' to Constantine Ducas.⁴⁴ Nicetas Acominatus⁴⁵ doubtless voiced the popular view when he makes Alexius say that to bequeath his crown (which he himself had won 'by civil slaughters and methods divergent from Christian laws') to a son-in-law instead of to a υἱòς ἁρμᾳδιος would be contrary, not only to imperial precedent but also to common sense; it would obviously be wise for a man who had himself been a usurper to lay the foundation of his dynasty as solidly as possible. If John took the signet-ring off the dying Alexius' hand, Nicetas believes it was with the Emperor's consent.⁴⁶ The same writer in telling of John's death⁴⁷ gives us two interesting facts, first that the Emperor who had himself received the crown … yet passed over his firstborn Isaac for his violent temper, and left the Empire to the second son Manuel, justifying his conduct by the parallels of Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and David, whom God had favoured though they were not eldest sons; secondly, that though John's relations and friends ratified his choice, yet some of them felt that their kinship and seniority entitled them to reign instead. This idea that the eldest adult of a house had the right to succeed, (which prevailed in Turkey under the late régime), makes Nicephorus Bryennius⁴⁸ feel that the natural and rightful heir to Michael VII was not his young son Constantine but his brother of the same name. When the elder Constantine declined to reign, Alexius according to his son-in-law fully admitted the rights of the younger one to at least co-sovereignty with the Emperor Botaniates and afterwards with himself. Next to Constantine the rightful heir was John, 'marked out for ruling by a double claim' as a Comnenus and a Ducas⁴⁹ and thus connected with two former emperors. 'For after the Porphyrogenete had left this life, who had a greater right to rule?' This decided opinion expressed by Nicephorus Bryennius surely disposes of the usually accepted theory that Anna kept all through her father's lifetime that hope to succeed him which could be logically based only on the claims of her first fiancé Constantine. These claims had indeed been so notorious that Botaniates alienated popular sympathy by passing them over in favour of his own brother-in-law whom he hoped to make his successor. On another occasion they served to fill the boy's mother with natural fear for his life at the hands of a usurping emperor;⁵⁰ in the disorders bound to follow the deposition of his stepfather Botaniates,⁵¹ Alexius might well have thought the lawful Ducas heir dangerous and had him killed or at least blinded. Here as in the case of Botaniates' chosen successor Synadenus, and in that of the two sons of another deposed Emperor, Romanus Diogenes, Alexius displayed a surprising clemency which his daughter greatly admired. Constantine received from the Emperor not only honour but love,⁵² a member of the Synadenus family had a position in the imperial army at Durazzo where he met his death,⁵³ and the forbearing kindness of Alexius to Leo and Nicephorus Diogenes both in war and peace⁵⁴ comes out distinctly in Anna's narrative, being in marked contrast with their harsh treatment by their half-brother Michael VII⁵⁵ on the occasion of his coming to power. Yet the serious danger which threatened from the children of previous emperors is shown not only by the whole story of Nicephorus Diogenes' plot and by Anna's grave words⁵⁶ about it, but by the fact that an impostor who impersonated his dead brother Constantine (not Leo, as Anna erroneously says⁵⁷) could head an invasion of the Empire by the Comans, who came 'in order forsooth to seat this man on his paternal throne', and could meet with welcome from several of the Emperor's own towns.

Of the precariousness of Alexius' hold upon his power we shall speak later on. Plots are almost as incessant as wars throughout his reign, and his mild treatment of the conspirators seems to point to fear quite as much as to clemency. Usurpation still appeared to malcontents a perfectly natural way of coming to the throne,⁵⁸ though a slight colour of hereditary right in the usurper might be desirable. But to Anna, the daughter of just such a usurper, the principle of hereditary succession was already sacrosanct, and she is quite consistent on the subject. Not only to emperors does she ascribe the right of bequest. As a matter of course Robert Guiscard is succeeded by his sons,⁵⁹ and St. Gilles at Tripoli first by a nephew and then by a bastard son and that son's son.⁶⁰ Under the circumstances she could hardly without stultifying herself have hoped to mount her father's throne in preference to John, and we have no adequate reason for believing that she did so.⁶¹

…..

Her Self-Pity

The question of these much-heralded 'woes' next claims our attention. If Anna had no reason to feel that Fate (however harsh) had been unjust, and if her being passed over for the throne was only what the birth of her brother and the death of her fiancé led her to expect, why does she represent herself as engulfed in troubles 'from her swaddling bands' or at any rate before she had passed her eighth year? We may begin by mentioning certain subsidiary causes. First there is the factor of self-pity founded on that vanity which has always figured in the Greek character, and is indeed not unknown in other nations. The presupposition is that all the good things in one's life are no more than one's due, while the evils come from a cruel fate. Then there is the almost inevitable distortion of view due to lapse of years. Not many people even if aided by voluminous diaries remember their childhood as it actually was, and it is quite possible that distance lent enchantment to Anna's view of her dead loved ones, and gave her a heightened sense of past injuries at the hands of men and gods. Still there can be few if any writers who without any apparent cause have been as vehement in their cursings of the day when they were born. Miss Gardner⁶² is of opinion that though she loved her parents and her sisters, and in fact all her family except her brother John, yet her childhood was made unhappy by dissensions in the Palace. The Ducas family, the kinsmen of Alexius' wife, hated and were hated by his masterful mother Anna Dalassena, who kept her grip on things till far on into the reign.⁶³ The ex-Empress Maria, with whom apparently Anna lived, according to the prevailing custom of the day,⁶⁴ as the child-betrothed of her son Constantine, does not seem to have been acceptable to either the Ducas or the Comnenus party, and was sufficiently discontented to join (up to a certain point) in the conspiracy against Alexius of her late husband's half-brother Nicephorus Diogenes.⁶⁵ We get throughout the Alexias hints, couched in obscure language, of plots and intrigues and family quarrels; possibly a sensitive and clever child was conscious of and saddened by all this. One other point may be mentioned. Both Zonaras⁶⁶ and Glycas⁶⁷ represent Alexius as an unfaithful husband in his early married life; if this is true, Irene's injuries may well have reacted on her eldest child.

It will, however, be advisable to collect the various passages in which Anna gives her own autobiography, as we can then better judge of her true character.

(I) The third sentence of her Preface puts forward her claim to consideration as her father's biographer. She was 'nurtured and born in the purple' so that she was familiar with the facts; she had received an excellent education,⁶⁸ and was therefore capable of narrating them. In the Prologue to her Will she ascribes her educational advantages to her parents' care; in this Preface she refers them to Nature, her own zeal for learning, God above, and ὁ καιρᾳς, a quartet of causes most characteristi cally chosen. She is careful on all occasions to clear herself from the charge of bragging or partiality or 'making a parade of skill in letters', but we feel throughout that in this matter 'qui s'excuse s'accuse'. After this statement of her filial motives for writing, she passes on in the Preface to her even stronger conjugal wish, to finish the unfinished work of her husband. Then the lamentations begin: 'And when I come to this point I am filled with dizziness in my soul and I wet my eyes with streams of tears,'⁶⁹ mourning over the loss to herself and the world of so great a man as Nicephorus Bryennius. His death was the climax to her woes: I truly was conversant with terrible experiences so to speak from the very midst of the swaddling-bands of my imperial birth, and I met with no good fortune, unless any one should think it a good and smiling fortune that my mother and my father were the ruling sovereigns, and that it was the purple from which I sprang up. As for the rest, alas for the surges! alas for the upheavals!' which would move all animate and inanimate things to tears. Compared to her husband's death her previous griefs were as nothing, merely smoke forerunning a terrible fire. But she will not brood over the past; her task is to write about her father, and though the thought of what he was moves her 'to hottest tears, weeping with all the inhabited world', she will delay her start no longer, and so her Preface ends.

(II) In I. 10, p. 23, occurs a rather cryptic sentence. After saying that the foolish betrothal⁷⁰ by Michael VII of his son Constantine to Robert Guiscard's daughter was the real cause of the Norman invasion of the Empire, she says she will leave all description of this Constantine for the present: 'I will speak of it in the proper time, whenever I bewail my own misfortunes shortly after the narration of this marriage-contract and the defeat of all the barbarian power.' Constantine in his short life had two 'marriage-contracts' made for him, one with Helena and one with Anna; it would appear that the reference here is to the first one…. The question arises, why did she speak of it in the same breath with her 'own misfortunes'? What was the connexion between them? The 'defeat of all the barbarian power' must refer to 1083 and the campaign against Bohemund (for in 1085 Robert, after some naval fighting entailed by his renewed invasion of the Empire, died before his army ever came into action or met with a 'defeat'); yet Anna was not born till December of that same 1083. Probably the sentence may be paraphrased thus: I will not speak further of Constantine now; his life and death belong to my own sad history, and before I get to that I must pass from my brief mention of the disastrous contract between him and Helena, to tell of the war which followed therefrom, ending in the destruction of the tyrants from Normandy'….

(III) In I. 12, pp. 28 sqq., she refers again to the contract between Constantine and Helena and says: 'And when once more I remember this youth I grow sad in soul and confuse my arguments: but I cut short my narrative about him, reserving it all for the proper occasion.' She cannot, however, refrain from calling him 'a product of the Golden Age', and she adds: 'And I after so many years when I remember this youth am filled with tears. Yet I hold back my weeping and husband it for (more) suitable places.' She then repeats the statement that Constantine was betrothed to Helena, but adds with evident satisfaction that he was not old enough to consummate the marriage before his father fell from power, when his betrothed, whom he had always regarded with horror, was removed from the scene.⁷¹

(IV) In III. 1 she dwells on the beauty and charm of Constantine, aged seven, and speaks of him as one of 'my own people'.⁷² It was, she declares, care for him and fear for his life that made the ex-Empress Maria cling after her second husband's deposition to the shelter of the palace, not any illicit affection for Alexius as reported by the slander-loving populace. And she emphasizes her assertions in these words: I had certainty in this instance … having been brought up with (Constantine)⁷³ by the Empress from my childhood (till a time) when I had not yet passed my eighth year. And because she had much affection for me, she made me a sharer of all her secrets.' A few lines afterwards she says of Maria: 'I often heard her herself narrating all that happened to her, and into what fear she had fallen, especially on behalf of the child, when the Emperor Nicephorus (Botaniates) laid down his sovereignty.' Three chapters later⁷⁴ Anna tells us how generously, by contrast with the step-father Botaniates, Alexius had treated the young Constantine; he let him wear what Baynes⁷⁵ calls 'the purple boot the symbol of sovereignty', made him sign all documents after himself and in the same imperial cinnabar, and gave him a crown and a place in all processions.

(V) VI. 8. These honours were certainly retained by Constantine till the birth of John II if not longer, and for at least the first four years of Anna's life were shared by her. Her story of her birth as her parents' eldest-born, 'most honoured child of the purple and first of the family of Alexius',⁷⁶ is worth transcribing in full.⁷⁷

So the Emperor [after a final victory at Castoria over the Normans] returns a triumphant conqueror to the metropolis, … on Dec. 1 of the 7th indiction [i.e. December 1, 1083] and found the Empress in labour in the apartment assigned of old to empresses in childbed; now the people of long ago had called it The Purple Chamber, whence the name of Born in the Purple has gone out into the inhabited world. And about dawn (it was a Saturday) she gives birth before them to a female child, like, so they said, in all things to its father, and I forsooth was that child. And I have heard my mother the Empress narrating on certain occasions that two days⁷⁸ before the arrival of the Emperor into the Palace … she was seized with birthpangs, but making the sign of the cross over her body, she said: "Little child, await awhile the coming of thy father." But her mother the protovestiary, as she told me, reproved her much and said with anger: "Dost thou know if he will come for a month yet? and how wilt thou hold out against such pains?" However, the command of the Empress obtained fulfilment, which even in the womb indicated very plainly my future loyalty to my parents. For after this, when I had advanced in age and arrived at reason, I was wholeheartedly at one and the same time mother-lover and father-lover.⁷⁹ And as witnesses of this my disposition I have many persons, nay indeed all who know my affairs. But in addition to these there is the testimony of my many toils and pains on my parents' behalf, and those perils into which I threw myself from love to them, not sparing my honour nor my money nor my life itself: for my love to them so consumed me that I often risked my very soul for them. But I will not speak of this yet. Let my story return again to the things that happened to me from my very birth. For all the wonted ceremonies about the newborn children of emperors were carried out with unusual expense, so it is said, acclamations of course, and gifts and honours bestowed on the leaders of the Senate and of the army, so that they all rejoiced and exulted and sang paeans more than was ever known before, and the blood relations of the Empress in particular did not know what to do for pleasure. And after a few days had past, my parents adorn me like themselves with a crown and an imperial diadem. Now Constantine, son of the previous Emperor Michael Ducas, of whom my story has often made mention, was still reigning conjointly with the Emperor my father, and in deeds of gift he wrote his name in red ink with his, and in processions followed him wearing a tiara and in acclamations was acclaimed second. So when I was to be acclaimed the leaders of the acclamations⁸⁰ when it was the time to cheer shouted out "Constantine and Anna" in the same breath. And this indeed was done for a considerable time, as I have often since heard my relations and parents tell. Perhaps indeed this was a presage of what was to befall me, both of good fortune and contrariwise of bad.

Then follows the account of her sister Maria's birth, and of her parents' prayers for a son rewarded 'in the eleventh indiction', i.e. between September 1 1087 and August 31 1088, by the birth of John, an event over which the whole Empire rejoiced or pretended so to do. Anna has Schadenfreude in reflecting that the baby was ugly and the enthusiasm over him possibly insincere. But there is, we may repeat, no hint of any sense of injustice in her concluding words: 'Wishing then to promote this baby to imperial eminence and to bequeath to him the empire of the Greeks as his inheritance, they⁸¹ honour him in the Great Church of God with divine baptism and a crown. Such then was what happened to me born in the purple, from the very starting-place of my birth.'

It is worth noting that Anna never expressly says that she was betrothed to Constantine, though her grief over his loss and her attitude towards his mother might seem to imply it. But a 'grievous disease' ended the young man's prospects as a sovereign, and finally 'not long afterwards' his life. We might assume that Constantine's imperial honours lasted till 1092, when John's reign as co-Emperor with his father began,⁸² but for two facts. First, Archbishop Theophylact in January 1090⁸³ reproaches Alexius for not having yet associated his son with him in the Empire, which he is less likely to have done if that exalted place was still occupied by his own former pupil Constantine. Secondly, Zonaras⁸⁴ tells us that Alexius deliberately deprived Constantine of sovereignty, and if we consider this to be the beginning of Anna's mysterious woes 'from without', she herself dates the event for us as 1091, when she had not yet passed her eighth year.⁸⁵ If we compare the two passages in which she mentions this fateful 'eighth year', it would appear that the end of her upbringing by the ex-Empress Maria coincided at that time with an outburst of enmity from the 'malice of men'. The whole story is perplexing. Malaterra⁸⁶ believes that Botaniates had Constantine castrated, but Chalandon⁸⁷ dismisses this as 'invraisemblable, puisqu'Alexis le fiança à sa fille'.⁸⁸ It is, however, not impossible that Alexius at first contemplated only a betrothal (in order to appear in the eyes of the people as a supporter of Constantine's hereditary rights) and not a τέλειος γάμος. Anna was a kinswoman of Constantine, whose grandfather, the Emperor Constantine Ducas, was brother to her mother's grandfather John Ducas Caesar, and unless Alexius did later on hope and endeavour to overrule Church laws in her favour, this was probably one of the instances not unknown in medieval history where betrothal was arranged between persons who could never marry.⁸⁹ Perhaps her 'misfortunes' began when Constantine was deposed from his imperial position and she simultaneously realized, from protests of Church and people, that her betrothal was a hollow form and that she would never be either Empress or Constantine's wife.⁹⁰

Constantine however remained loyal to Alexius, who according to Anna 'loved him exceedingly like his own son', and in the plot of Nicephorus Diogenes in February 1094, though his mother was implicated, the boy himself was apparently quite innocent.⁹¹ But we cannot fail to notice that on this occasion Anna speaks of him as a landed proprietor able to entertain the Emperor and his suite at his country house, not as her own betrothed. In any case he probably died soon afterwards, before Anna in Zonaras'words was ὡρᾳ̑ίᾳ̑ γάμου. Certainly in 1097 we find Nicephorus Bryennius already spoken of as the γᾳ̑μβρòς of the Emperor, and as Anna's Caesar.⁹²

(VI) Returning to Anna's mysterious sorrows, we next hear of them in the long passage in XIV. 7. After saying that she got the facts about her father's life from eyewitnesses, and was, indeed, present herself 'in most cases', she goes on:

For my life was not such as is so to speak stay-at-home, revolving under shade and luxury, but from my very swaddling-bands, I swear by my God and His Mother, pains and afflictions and continual misfortunes seized on me, some from without, others from at home. For what I was as to bodily state, I will not say, but let those speak and speak fully who were about the women's apartments. But the external things, and all that befell me before I had passed my eighth year, and all the enemies that the malice of men caused to spring forth against me—this demands the Siren charm of Isocrates, Pindaric eloquence, the rolling periods of Polemon, Homer's Calliope, Sappho's lyre, or any power beyond these. For there is nothing in the way of ills, small or great, near or far, that did not press straightway upon me. And verily the surge prevailed manifestly, and from then even till now, up to the time when I am writing this composition, the sea of misfortunes has been roaring against me, and one after another the waves overtake me.

She then enumerates the sources of her history, and there follows a difficult passage:

But I have collected the most and best of these things now that the third after my father⁹³ is wielding the sceptre, when all flattery and lying have deserted the grandfather himself, and all are flattering the present throne, and towards the departed are showing no adulation, but are narrating the bare facts and stating them as they were. Now I, bitterly lamenting my misfortunes and at this point of time mourning for three sovereigns, my father the Emperor, my lady and mother and Empress, and (woe is me!) my consort the Caesar, keep myself mostly hidden⁹⁴ and devote myself to books and to God. And not even the most obscure of people will be allowed to visit me, not to speak of those from whom I could learn what they chanced to have heard from others, nor my father's greatest intimates. For this is the thirtieth year (I swear it by the souls of the most blessed sovereigns), that I have not beheld nor seen nor consorted with any of my father's attendants, and this because many have died, and many are kept away by fear. And in these absurd ways the rulers [doubtless the hated brother John] sentenced me not to be seen, but rather to be hated by the many.

The only written materials to which she describes herself as having access are 'certain worthless and altogether trifling compositions', which lacked literary skill, but tallied as to fact with her own memories of past conversations, and also with the recollections of the veterans now turned monks who had fought in the struggle that brought her father to the throne in 1081. Why she was allowed to converse with these, monks though they were, when other intercourse was forbidden her and when, as we believe, she was living in the precincts of a very strict nunnery, it is not easy to explain. At any rate, if we consider her seclusion to have been decreed by John in 1118, she was still writing her history in 1148.

(VII) In XV. 3, p. 468, we have once more the statement that Anna brought trouble on herself by her devotion to her father. Truth itself, she says, compels her to praise him, and she goes on: 'Let my history be devoted to the substance … of truth. For in other respects I showed my loyalty for my father, and also by this' (i.e. my truthful tale) I sharpened the spears and whetted the swords of enemies against myself, as all know who have not been ignorant of my affairs.'

(VIII) A most characteristic outburst ends the fifth chapter of this same Book XV. Mention of her brave and talented young brother Andronicus moves her to lament his early death. This in turn makes her question whether sufferers with 'such sensitiveness to ill' as hers would not be happier transformed into stones or birds or trees as in mythological tales. 'For if this were so, easily might the evils that have befallen me have made me a stone.'

(IX) Last but not least, we have the final chapter of the whole work, where Anna is almost as much occupied with her own afflictions as with those of her father. As a loving daughter she is reluctant to recapitulate the many things that devoured her heart, notably his death. Even the remembrance of his modesty which made him shrink from having his biography written moves her to 'lamentations and wailings', but… she braces herself to tell the sad tale. As the Emperor's illness gets more and more hopeless the family are subjected to 'turmoil and surge', to 'fear and peril'. Irene weeps floods of tears even while acting as nurse, and the Emperor actually chides her for letting the 'sea of grief' overwhelm her. By so doing however he only 'tears open even more the wound of misfortune' for them all. Anna goes on: 'But I was beside myself and I swear by all-knowing God to my present friends and to the men who shall hereafter light upon this history, that I was no better than madmen, but was wholly given up to my suffering.' In spite of this she ministers not only to her father but to her mother, who longs to die too. 'The pains of death then encircled us. And then I perceived I was out of my mind, for I raved and did not know what I should become or whither I should turn, seeing the Empress plunged into the sea of troubles and the Emperor dying'. Later on Irene says, ' "Let us begin the dirge." So I wailed with her despising all things, and I grieved with her.' The text is here defective, but we can make out that women in the plural, perhaps her mother and sisters, 'tore their clothes lamenting dismally', and that the Empress threw herself on the ground and smote her head with her hands. When the last moment had come, Anna says, 'I turned my head, feeling withered and cold, bending my head to the ground without speaking; then I put my two hands over my eyes and walking back I wailed.' This produced a 'great and bitter cry' from the Empress, and sorrow in 'the whole world' among all those who were not too much 'overpowered with grief' to show it outwardly. As for herself her 'sun set' when her father died, and she can hardly yet believe that those terrible events were not a dream, for if real how had she survived them? This brings her back to her old theme, See if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, and the history ends in a paroxysm of grief. If Alexius was her sun, Irene was her moon, and she survived both, only to see τò κορυφᾳ̑ιᾳτᾳ̑τον τω̑ν κακω̑ν in her husband's death. No form of sorrow had been spared her, reserved as she was 'for such encirclings of ills'. Despair came over her and she longed vainly to die or be turned like Niobe into stone. Yet this was not all, and here we scent an allusion to Alexius' 'successor on the throne' who, as she tells us shortly before, had left his father's dying bed and 'pressed into the Great Palace.' It is nearly certainly to him that his sister attributes 'the intolerable ills stirred up in the Palace by men' against her, and though she deprecates bitterness …, it is with a vivid sense of her vitriolic resentment against someone or something that we lay her pages down.

What then were these terrible woes? What did the malice of enemies do to her? What does she mean by all these toils and perils and whetted swords? We can sympathize with her over the loss of parents and husband,⁹⁵ but not with the exaggerated frenzy into which it throws her; we can pity her for her life in enforced retirement, but when between the lines we read her implacable hatred, we feel that in John's place we should have insisted on the same. Furthermore, even if we take with a grain of salt Nicetas' well-known story of her brother's great magnanimity to her after her attempted rebellion,'⁹⁶ we know from the Typikon of her mother's convent⁹⁷ that the widowed Empress and her daughter and granddaughter were allowed to live in dignity and ease, administering with well-nigh autocratic power the institution Irene had founded. What then was the carking sorrow that for nearly threescore years, from her eighth year to her sixty-fifth, 'engulfed' Anna Commena? After eight centuries we cannot tell; we talk a different language literally and figuratively, and we cannot gauge the depth of feeling beneath her hysterical bombast. One thing is, however, self-evident; if, as experience teaches, great sorrows are dumb (Job being the notable exception that proves the rule), then Anna's were emphatically not great except in her own self-centred, self-satisfied mind.

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Feeling about Beauty

If Anna admired noble birth, hardly less did she admire beauty; like a true Greek she almost makes a god of a handsome face and a well-made form. Her father, mother, grandmother, fiancé, fiancé's mother, and husband are drawn for us to the life, and no friend or even prominent enemy can be mentioned without a personal description.⁹⁸ Her portrait of Bohemund⁹⁹ has been construed by her critics into an unconscious revelation of her love for him; it is far more reasonable to see in it a reluctant tribute to those external charms which she quite futilely professes to despise,¹⁰⁰ and which she and her contemporaries so highly valued. His beauty is one of the qualities which makes Botaniates choose Synadenus as his successor;¹⁰¹ for his beauty Alexius cannot help loving the undeserving Nicephorus Diogenes, no less than his worthy brother Leo;¹⁰² it is their 'beauty and strength of body' as much as their 'splendour of race' that moves the Emperor to deliver from captivity in Cairo the Frankish counts whom he had no other reason to like.¹⁰³

A full discussion of this point with reference to the old idea of καλοκἀγᾲθóς would lead us too far afield, but it may be worth briefly noting the special points of beauty on which Anna lays stress. A man must be tall¹⁰⁴ (indeed like a Homeric hero he should surpass all others by head and shoulders) and perfectly proportioned.¹⁰⁵ In women 'harmony of limbs and parts' is no less essential,¹⁰⁶ and their faces must be neither round nor pointed.¹⁰⁷ Bright eyes with arching brows, fitted to inspire awe as well as admiration, are desirable both in men and women, and many are the references to eyes fixed in thought or cast down in modesty, or again to 'cheerful', 'stern', or 'haughty' glances, as well as to the keen gaze of vigilance,'¹⁰⁸ and the 'hot and mad' looks of a truculent controversialist.¹⁰⁹ Incidentally this helps to make us realize the true awfulness to a Byzantine mind of punishment by blinding.

A fair and glowing complexion is repeatedly praised; like the Spaniards of to-day, the dark-skinned Byzantines admired blondes. Golden-red of all shades seems to have been their favourite colour for hair: to be 'ruddy' in locks and skin was considered a beauty.¹¹⁰ The Byzantines, we may remark, wore their hair longer than our modern men, but shorter than 'barbarians'.¹¹¹ When Alexius' helmet falls off, his 'sunny' hair gets into his eyes.¹¹² The Normans usually wore their hair 'long like women',¹¹³ but Robert Guiscard and Bohemund had theirs cut short, doubtless like their compatriots shown in the Bayeux Tapestry.¹¹⁴ In the matter of beards the two races as it were changed places, the Greeks (and the Venetians) being bearded and the Normans not.¹¹⁵ The instances in the Alexias of shaving as a sign of humiliation or mourning need not be quoted; the last and most dramatic is where as Alexius breathes his last the newly widowed Empress Irene 'taking a little knife cuts off her hair to the skin'.¹¹⁶ It gives, we seem to feel, the death-blow to that beauty which, by reason of anxiety and devoted nursing, 'wasting had seized' some time back.¹¹⁷ Even in all her filial anguish Anna had noted this fact.

Before we leave this question of physical beauty it may be worth while to transcribe Anna's three most elaborate pen-pictures, those of the ex-Empress Maria and of her own parents. Though lengthy they are among her finest and most characteristic passages.¹¹⁸

Of Maria she says:

She was tall in stature like a cypress, and her skin was white as snow: her face was not absolutely round, and in colour it was a perfect spring flower, nay a rose out and out. But who of mortals could express the brilliance of her eyes? Her eyebrows were thick and red, and her glance was sparkling. Apelles and Phidias could not have done her justice, and her beauty like the Gorgon's head turned beholders into stone with amazement…. Such harmony of limbs and parts, of the whole with the parts, and of these with the whole, none ever yet beheld in a mortal's body: a living statue, dear to lovers of beauty.

The next chapter contains the famous descriptions of Alexius and Irene:

Now the outward forms of both the sovereigns Alexius and Irene were amazing and altogether inimitable, and no painter could paint them by gazing at some archetype of beauty, nor could a sculptor mould lifeless substance thus, but even that well-known Canon of Polyclitus would have seemed to turn into downright clumsiness if any one had gazed at these living statues, I mean the lately crowned imperial pair, and then at the works of that same Polyclitus. For Alexius was not very far exalted above the earth [we may note the apology couched thus in high-flown terms], but was drawn out symmetrically in breadth. So when standing he did not cause such great astonishment in the beholders, but if he sat down on the imperial throne and flashed fierce brilliance from his eyes, he seemed like lightning to send forth irresistible brightness, both from his countenance and from his whole frame. On each side black eyebrows arched, and under them his eye was set, with a glance at once awful and gentle, so that from the gleam of his look, the clearness of his forehead, and the dignity of his countenance with the flush that passed over it, a man derived both fear and encouragement. Then the breadth of his shoulders and the strength of his arms and the expansion of his chest were all on a heroic scale and invariably called the vulgar herd to astonishment and delight. For the personality of the man had beauty and grace and strength and unapproachable dignity….

As for the Empress Irene my mother she was at that time a child and had not yet passed her fifteenth year. For she had shot up like a straight evergreen plant, symmetrically broadened or narrowed throughout her limbs and parts in due proportion. She was lovely to see and lovely to hear, and in truth as an object of hearing and sight she never sated the eye or the ear. For her very countenance distilled the radiance of a moon, but had not been formed in a regular circle as with Assyrian women, nor on the other hand was it long drawn out as with the Scythians, but it departed a little from the exactness of the circle. And the bloom was spread out on her cheeks and presented a rosebed even to those at a distance. Her eye was sparkling, and with all its charm was terrible in its gaze, so as to draw the eyes of the beholders towards her by her charm and beauty, and yet compel them to shut them with fear, not knowing how to look or how to hide themselves. And I know not whether any Athene was really discovered by the ancient poets and historians, for I hear of her as a myth, spoken of and ridiculed. But if any one had said that this Empress was Athene, manifested in those¹¹⁹ times in human life, or fallen down from heaven with a celestial gleam and unapproachable radiance, he would not have gone beyond probability. And, what was even more wonderful and not to be found in any other of womankind, on the one hand she restrained the lawless among men, and then when they had been restrained by fear she gave them encouragement, all out of one glance. And her lips were mostly closed and showed her silent, truly a breathing statue of beauty and a living monument of harmony. For the most part her hand acted as charioteer for her speech in perfect harmony, bringing forward the wrist with the arm, and you would have said that ivory had been carved by some craftsman into a framing of fingers and hands. Furthermore the iris of her eyes resembled the calm sea radiating forth its blue in deep-waved serenity. And the white of her eyes all round shone in rivalry with the iris, and they flashed forth irresistible grace and gave charm unspeakable to her glances. Such in appearance were Irene and Alexius.

We have now considered Anna's attitude to her family, to her married life, and to her circumstances in general. We have tried to study her sentiments as to externals, birth, beauty, ceremonial, and the like. Summing it up, are we not forced to say somewhat as follows: Anna Comnena spent her youth and middle age in the most sumptuous court in Christendom, where men were striving to maintain classical ideals in the face of barbarians on the East and barbarians on the West. Born in the purple, she associated with her immediate family and the 'kinsmen', and probably with no one else except an occasional learned man. The wonder is, not that she sets so much store by outward advantages, but that she does not set more, indeed that she is not more proud, more conceited, more narrow, more arrogant, than we actually find her to be.

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Oral and Written Sources

In this pursuit of truth it was customary for classical authors to appeal, when their personal knowledge ended, to eyewitnesses or to common opinion,¹²⁰ and this fashion was faithfully copied by the Byzantines. Thus at one point Nicephorus Bryennius says: 'All know these things and the circumstances lie on the lips of all.'¹²¹ Cinnamus says he will deal only briefly with affairs that he neither saw himself, nor learnt with certainty.¹²² Attaliates will write simply, as suits history, and confine himself to things he himself saw.¹²³ Nicetas Acominatus will rely, as to everything that happened before his time, on what he had learnt from eyewitnesses.¹²⁴ Anna goes upon the same lines. She has got her information from 'those who saw the facts', whose sons and grandchildren are alive as she writes,¹²⁵ or from her parents,¹²⁶ or from her uncles (especially George Palaeologus),¹²⁷ and other 'actual soldiers' or 'older men' who took part,¹²⁸ or from her father-in-law Bryennius, or from the Empress Maria,¹²⁹ or from the ex-enemy Peter Aluph, or a 'Latin envoy sent by the Bishop of Bari to Robert' Guiscard and consequently present at his Durazzo campaign,¹³⁰ or even from the ferrymen who had picked up news that came straight from the front.¹³¹ At every turn she tries to impress upon us that her knowledge is either taken from her own recollections or gained at first hand from others who participated in the events.¹³²

Of the written sources of the Alexias we must now speak briefly. Anna herself refers to the unfinished though already published¹³³ ὕλη ἱστορίᾳ̑ς of her husband Nicephorus Bryennius Caesar, begun at the command of his mother-in-law as a means of preserving Alexius' great deeds from oblivion. As it terminates before the abdication of Nicephorus Botaniates, it affords material only for Anna's first two books, and not even for the whole of these. Still it has considerable importance for us, not merely as the 'Onlie Begetter', according to Anna, of her own work,¹³⁴ but as giving her a model for its general lines. Thus she tells us¹³⁵ that it is in imitation of Bryennius that she altogether omits τὰ πᾳ̑ιδικά of her father, and in its descriptions, form of narrative, and above all (as we saw before) its sentiments, the Alexias so far resembles the Hyle that, but for its far more difficult and stilted Greek, the wife's work might come from the husband's hand. On five occasions¹³⁶ she explicitly advises her readers to consult her husband's writings as fuller than her own, though curiously enough she is inaccurate in stating their scope, saying¹³⁷ that his book begins with Romanus Diogenes, whereas the first reign described is actually the earlier one of Isaac Comnenus. The opening of the second chapter of her first Book is a free version of Book II, Chapter 21 of the Hyle, and even more closely copied are the three speeches put into her father's mouth in the same episode. Similarly Bryennius' fourth Book is the quarry from which her accounts of the elder Bryennius and of Basilacius are hewn.¹³⁸ For later events we feel sure Anna must have used her husband's recollections, especially as to the many scenes in which he played a part.¹³⁹ It is therefore almost inconceivable that she should have disagreed in toto with Bryennius' view about John's right of succession¹⁴⁰ and yet should never mention the fact…. On the whole we may apply to the reign of Alexius the lament over the dearth of contemporary historians which Bury utters as to the lives of John II and of Manuel I,¹⁴¹ and conclude that, like Cinnamus and Nicetas, Anna had to rely on sources 'almost exclusively oral'.

For Byzantine events before her day we know that she took extracts verbatim from the Chronography of Psellus¹⁴², and she may have read the works of Attaliates and Scylitzes and Leo Diaconus, possibly even an early issue, so to speak, of Zonaras; but her references to past events are too infrequent to need special notice here. For Alexius' Patzinak Wars she is our sole authority, and we cannot trace her sources. In the First Crusade she narrates on the whole the same facts as the Latin chroniclers,¹⁴³ but from too utterly different a point of view to make any mutual influencing possible, even if she could by any miracle have seen their writings and read their 'barbarous' language. In her theological passages she owes much to her father's chosen champion of orthodoxy, the monk Euthymius Zigabenus, but she may also quite possibly have studied the Conciliar Decrees for herself.

An elaborate defence of her whole method of writing history occurs in XIV. 7, and the assertions which she makes of her truthfulness are worth studying:

Following the facts themselves and neither adding on my own account nor taking away, I both speak and write what has happened. And the proof is at hand, for I do not take back my composition to 10,000 years ago, but there are some who survive to the present day, and who knew my father and who tell me the facts about him, by whom no small part of the history has been here contributed, with some telling and remembering one thing and some another, as each chanced to do, and all agreeing. And in most cases I too was present with my father and accompanied my mother…. Some things then … I know of myself [we may believe that her memories dated at least from the Crusaders' coming to Constantinople when she was 13] and the things that happened in the wars I got from those who fought beside my father (for I questioned them in various ways about these matters), and also from certain ferrymen who brought us news. But above all I often listened face to face to the Emperor and George Palaeologus when they discoursed about these things.

She then hints in veiled language at the tyranny which had kept her for the last thirty years from consorting with any who were attached to her father or could have given her information; we are therefore bound to conclude that her first-hand evidence was all collected before her father's death, whereas her history was not written for three decades afterwards, when 'the third after' Alexius was reigning, i.e. Manuel (1143-80). In her retirement she could only go for fresh materials to 'certain worthless and altogether trifling compositions', and to aged monks who had been laymen and fighters in the far-off days before her father's accession. The information from these two sources, when carefully weighed, proved to tally with what Anna had often heard from her father and from her paternal and maternal uncles. 'From all which things the whole body of the truth is woven together.'

At the end of the same Book XIV she asserts that 'among men now alive there are many witnesses' to the Emperor's dealings with the Manichaeans, and his ordinances for the new town of Alexiopolis. As always, she deprecates the charge of filial partiality and shrinks from the very idea of being 'convicted of falsehood'.¹⁴⁴ …

Not because she loves her father does she praise him, but because 'the nature of the facts'¹⁴⁵ and his astounding merits compel her. She appeals for confirmation to 'all that have not been ignorant of our affairs'. Truth has been her supreme aim in writing, and this has brought on her the hatred of her enemies. 'Verily,' she sums up, 'I would not betray Truth under the form of History.'

With this ideal before her, it is natural that we should find her attempting to weigh evidence and get at real truth. We may assert almost positively that she never deliberately falsifies facts, and does her best to be impartial to friend and foe in praise or blame.¹⁴⁶ She had prejudices, racial, social, and personal, but if she deceives us it is only when she herself is deceived. Thus, in discussing her father's share in the blinding of Nicephorus Diogenes, she says: 'God alone may know: I at any rate have not been able hitherto to find out for certain.'¹⁴⁷ Again, 'God alone knows' why the Sultan of Cairo released the crusading counts, and she tries to assess his probable motives.¹⁴⁸ She studies astrology a little, not in order to practise it, but 'so as by more accurately judging this foolish thing to judge those who have toiled over it'.¹⁴⁹ We have already spoken of the cautious and sceptical spirit which made it hard for Byzantines to take anything at its face value. This in Alexius led to surprisingly enlightened views as to portents and omens,¹⁵⁰ and the same feeling inspires Anna with at least the rudiments of historical criticism. Abel Lefranc¹⁵¹ claims for Guibert, Abbot of Nogent, the place of pioneer in this field, and certainly the frank contempt shown in his De pignoribus sanctorum for relics (even for a tooth of Our Lord's) and bogus miracles and trust in the Ordeal, as well as for the absurd and never verified histories of saints told by monks whose ignorance and vice he lashes, is startlingly modern to our ears. But all the time, right across Europe, a Byzantine princess was cautiously refusing to commit herself as to visions¹⁵² or prophetic inspiration,¹⁵³ speaking with scarcely veiled contempt of the 'experts' who explained portents,¹⁵⁴ weighing testimony, scrutinizing motives, and in short trying as far as in her lay to re trieve Truth from the bottom of its proverbial well.

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Omissions and Inconsistencies

On the purely technical side of Anna's composition two points must not be left unnoticed, her omissions and her inconsistencies. First, her lacunae. At several places in the text there are blank spaces in the manuscript, such as when Alexius comes to 'the plains called——', and to a certain place lying——.¹⁵⁵ We are told that the devils were enraged with Basil the Bogomile for betraying to the Emperor—— ——;¹⁵⁶ presumably there should follow the name for their secret mysteries; was it deliberately omitted as infandum? Or are all these blanks to be explained as cases where she meant as we say to look the thing up, and either forgot or was hindered by the enforced seclusion of which she complains?¹⁵⁷

Besides this, characters are sometimes introduced without names, e.g. 'the Count who was commandant', 'the man guarding this place', 'those of the priestly register whose names I omit'.¹⁵⁸ This may be ignorance or mere forgetfulness: in one instance she says frankly that time has taken away her recollection of certain names.¹⁵⁹ But over and over again we feel she is making deliberate omissions. It is not only that she revels as we have seen in mysterious self-pity. Even when she is not personally concerned we find her suppressing names that she must have known and hurrying over controversial incidents. What was the court scandal at which she hints, when a eunuch was able to stop an ex-Empress's marriage …? Why did Maria adopt¹⁶⁰ Alexius, and did he really ever think of divorcing Irene to marry her?¹⁶¹ Who were the 'certain people' to whom Nicephorus Diogenes spoke … of his plot and whom Alexius vainly tried to win over?¹⁶² When she is telling us how this same conspiracy spread to the highest ranks in the army and the state, including senators and the two nobles Cecaumenus Catacalo and Michael Taronites, we come upon a lacuna of about thirty-four letters which by rights ought to contain the name of another banished suspect.¹⁶³ The incriminating letters found in Diogenes' tent are vaguely described as 'sent to him by certain people', but the fact that these people are ἒκκριτοι ἄπᾳ̑ντες is a source of great embarrassment to Alexius,¹⁶⁴ and it seems likely that Anna could have revealed their identity if she had chosen. She longs to catalogue all … whose ingratitude filled her father's life with trouble, but she restrains her 'tongue and panting heart'. She declares that the 'folly of those who succeeded to the throne' stultified her father's achievements so that 'matters turned to confusion', but we look in vain for any explanation of the statement.¹⁶⁵ 'The sedition of those at home', not further specified, is one of the great complications when the Crusaders are threatening to overthrow the Empire.¹⁶⁶ Anna hints, 'so as not to tell everything', at a most sinister and powerful 'third cause' for her father's gout, a cause worse than accidents, worse even than worry from barbarian Franks; this was the constant presence near him of some one who 'did not come in contact with him just once and go away, but was present with him and clung to him like the worst kind of flavours in jars'. This man either actually or metaphorically tried to poison the Emperor and was only foiled by the vigilance of Irene. 'But,' says Anna, 'biting one's tongue one must check one's story and not stray from the straight road, even though that story is very desirous to leap up against the utter scoundrels.'¹⁶⁷ Perhaps some day the manuscript of a twelfth-century Procopius or Psellus may be discovered and may throw light on Anna's dark hints. Till then we can only enumerate them, and in default of a better accept the explanation offered by most critics, that at no time during the reigns of her brother and nephew did she feel safe in speaking out. That her mysteriousness is deliberate all must be inclined to admit, but whether it is a mere affectation or does in truth mask hidden treasures of information no human being can say.

Next come the inconsistencies between different parts of her book. Here no occult motive can have been at work, neither love of mystery nor difficulty in getting at facts. She simply is inharmonious with her own self, and the one thing to which this points is a lack of careful revision.¹⁶⁸

One marked instance is the confused account of Alexius' robbing of the churches.¹⁶⁹ In V. 2 he seems to do the deed twice, once through his brother Isaac for fighting the Normans, once later in view of 'Scythian' enemies. Yet the one restitution narrated (in VI. 3) seems to have taken place soon after December 1, 1083, long before the Patzinak War of 1086, though 'raids of Scythians' are mentioned here also. Whatever these raids may have been,¹⁷⁰ Anna leaves them undescribed.

Again Durazzo is mentioned as early as Book I and constantly afterwards, with the frequent comment that it is also called Epidamnus, but suddenly in XII. 9 she thinks fit to give a detailed account of its surroundings, adding further details in XIII. 3. The same is true of Philippopolis and Mount Haemus.¹⁷¹ Characters often come in on two occasions and are not described till the second.¹⁷² References are found to past statements that have never been made,¹⁷³ and knowledge which the reader does not possess is presupposed,¹⁷⁴ as for instance in the vexed question of Botaniates' heir.¹⁷⁵ Fresh people appear and play their part without a word of introduction and disappear again as abruptly, very much in the style of what some one has called the 'tantalizingly incomplete narratives' of the New Testament.¹⁷⁶ Contradictory assertions are made in different parts of the book,¹⁷⁷ two of them curiously enough about the Diogenes family. Anna first tells us that Leo Diogenes was killed in the Patzinak campaign and then, confusing him with his brother Constantine, that he fell at Antioch.¹⁷⁸ At one point she describes Nicephorus Diogenes as a popular hero,¹⁷⁹ at another she speaks of 'the hostility of all men' towards him and his family. Raymond de St. Gilles first appears as 'the Count¹⁸⁰ Prebentzas', then as 'Isangeles', and there is not a word to show that they are the same person.¹⁸¹ Two slightly different accounts are given of Alexius' ransoming certain crusading counts from captivity in Cairo.¹⁸² When the Emperor uses Sacred Lots for the second time, Anna speaks as if it was a new and wonderful invention.¹⁸³ In XI. 6 she promises us a description of Theodore Gabras' origin and character when she has already given it in VIII. 9. The story of Gregory Taronites is so inconsequent as to make one question whether his personality has not been confused with that of Gregory Gabras. At any rate he appears first as Gregory and then as Taronites, and we hear of his appointment to succeed the general Dabatenus in the Dukedom of Trebizond, whereas that district was still, when last mentioned, in the possession of Theodore Gabras, father of the other Gregory.¹⁸⁴ Aspietes and Tzachas both appear to fall dead and some time afterwards reappear on the stage without explanation.¹⁸⁵

The town of Aulon (modern Avlona) is captured, before Robert Guiscard arrives in Illyria, by Bohemund,¹⁸⁶ who spends some little time there after his defeat at Larissa and before crossing to Italy.¹⁸⁷ So it is to the flag planted 'as towards Aulon' that the Normans who wish to return home repair after the capture of Castoria.¹⁸⁸ Yet as an essential preliminary to his second campaign Robert orders his sons Roger and Guy to take 'all the cavalry' and 'to be zealous to seize' this town. 'And they crossing over [from Italy] took it by assault.¹⁸⁹ When had the imperial troops recovered it? Anna does not say. In the same way Nicomedia is freed from Turks early in Alexius' reign,¹⁹⁰ and is apparently open for the passage of Taticius and the imperial troops in VI. 10, p. 172. But a very short time afterwards¹⁹¹ we have the state ment, made without explanation or comment, that the Turks ruling at Nicaea 'were holding the city of Nicomedes' and the Emperor wished to drive them out.¹⁹² And to give one more instance of inconsistency (in this case very trifling) we may observe that the causes alleged by Anna for Alexius' gout are various and are never given all together.¹⁹³

In short, the whole composition of the work inclines us to believe first that it was not written, as the French would say, tout d'un trait,¹⁹⁴ and that the different parts were not necessarily composed in their chronological order; secondly that the revision was never completely carried out, for what reason, whether indifference or the inertia of old age or death itself, we do not know.

Fortunately, none of the questions involved are serious ones, except for the mystery about Anna's woes and Alexius' 'bosom enemies'; we are merely tantalized by being left in an ignorance that is in fact immaterial. Still, in a work that claims to be above all things a truthful record of the past, we must admit that omissions and inconsistencies, whether wilful or accidental and however small, do mar the perfection of the whole.

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Conclusion

We have now come back in a sort of circle to the point where we began. We have dealt with Anna as a princess, as an educated woman, as a historian, and as a writer, and because a writer must express ideas we stand once more at the very threshold of our inquiry. What were her moral and intellectual standards and how did she exhibit them?

We do not however propose to travel over the same road once more. Her ideas as such and their similarities to those of her contemporaries¹⁹⁵ have been set forth as far as possible under appropriate headings. In her generalizations and moralizings she either repeats the common platitudes of literature¹⁹⁶ or shows her personal bias as a Greek princess against common people and barbarians, and as an orthodox believer against heretics.¹⁹⁷ Approaching them from the side of style, we are constrained to say that only on a very few occasions do her maxims possess any individual flavour¹⁹⁸ or deserve notice from the literary point of view.¹⁹⁹ Indeed, the chief remark to be made about her generalizations is that their wordy elaborateness often makes translation very difficult. The sentence about Monomachatus and his double-dealing is a case in point,²⁰⁰ so are two passages describing a virtuous man's agitation over his first fault,²⁰¹ and the fatal results of departing from 'the mean'.²⁰² One of the most stilted and cumbrous passages in the whole work is Anna's defence of her father for preferring strategy to fighting.²⁰³ …

Where then in the final summing up does she stand as a writer? That must always remain largely a matter of individual judgement, but after admitting that she often gives us trite maxims, involved sentences, and long dull passages, we may still justly claim for her the 'verve' and 'chaleur' of which Chalandon speaks. She is enthusiastic about her main subject, which is a great thing; and she can present pictures vividly to her reader, which is an even greater.

Some have been translated in full in the course of this volume; to others we can only make reference. But it is safe to say that there is not one of the fifteen Books that has not one graphic scene or more. Book I has the night-attack of Basilacius on Alexius' camp and the parley between Robert Guiscard and his father-in-law;²⁰⁴ Book II shows us the Palace at meal-times and the womenkind of the Comneni taking sanctuary in St. Sophia,²⁰⁵ while John Ducas Caesar gets strange news at night and sits up in bed thoughtfully stroking his beard. Book III has lifelike portraits of the ex-Empress Maria and her son Constantine, and of the new sovereigns Alexius and Irene.²⁰⁶ It also contains the great eulogy on Anna Dalassena and a wonderful picture of the storm which wrecks Robert's fleet.²⁰⁷ Book IV has Anna's best battle-scenes, and especially Alexius' marvellous escape on horseback.²⁰⁸ Book V gives us the very realistic description of the philosopher Italus, and also shows us Irene reading the Fathers at meals.²⁰⁹ Book VI is on the whole a dull one, but Alexius' treatment of the Manichaeans is put well if unpleasantly before us,²¹⁰ and Anna's account of her own birth is inimitable.²¹¹ In Book VII we get her father's fighting with the Patzinaks and his trick over the eclipse;²¹² the adventures of George Palaeologus²¹³ during his flight are graphically narrated, as are the insolence of the deserter Neantzes,²¹⁴ and Alexius' ingenious device in rolling wheels against the Scythian horses' legs.²¹⁵ Book VIII gives us several fine passages, the picture of the torchlight procession and service held in the camp on the eve of battle, the thirst of the troops eagerly relieved by the local peasants, and the curious story of the Emperor's suspected nephew John Comnenus, with the intrusions and quarrels of which the imperial tent is the scene.²¹⁶ Book IX has the really thrilling account of Nicephorus Diogenes' rebellion: indeed the episodes first of Alexius' narrow escape from being assassinated at night, an escape due to the presence of a handmaid brushing away the mosquitoes from the imperial pair as they sleep, then of the audience in the great tent, where Alexius sits in irate majesty on his throne and harangues the trembling mal-contents, are among Anna's most successful pages.²¹⁷ Book X has no less than six and a half chapters of sustained interest about the coming of the Crusaders, of whom Bohemund is portrayed with special care.²¹⁸ Book XI, though gory, is dull, except for the description of the Greek fire-ships encountering the Pisan fleet,²¹⁹ and for Bohemund's journey from Syria in a coffin.²²⁰ Book XII shows us the Empress in camp, and also contains the vivid picture of the convicted Anemas conspirators led with contumely through the town, while the compassionate Anna hesitates to disturb on their behalf her parents' prayers.²²¹ Book XIII is at first chiefly interesting as showing Anna's own interest in Bohemund's siegecraft, of which she gives three instances;²²² but then we get the amazingly modern passage where minute points of 'protocole' almost bring the whole peace-negotiations to grief,²²³. and the great pen-picture of the Norman prince.²²⁴. Book XIV is raised from its low level of long-windedness (with the Emperor's virtues and noble sentiments dwelt on ad nauseam) by the gem of the book, the account of Alexius sitting or standing all day and most of the night while the Crusaders talked and talked.²²⁵ It seems worth while to give this passage in full:

As soon as day came and directly the sun had leapt up over the Eastern horizon, he seated himself on the imperial throne, giving orders that all the Celts should come in each day unhindered, partly because he wanted them to set forth their demands, partly scheming to subdue them by all sorts of arguments. But the Celtic counts … did not make their approach to the Emperor in orderly fashion, but each of the counts came in bringing with him as many men as he wished, and the next came directly behind, and another after him again. And on coming in they did not make their discourse by the water-clock, as formerly was enjoined on orators, but however much time each one (whoever he was) desired for conversing with the Emperor, that he had … And when evening came [Alexius] who had remained without food all day stood up from his throne, turning to the imperial bed-chamber, but not even thus was he freed from the annoyance of the Celts. For while one hurried in before another, not only of those who had been left out of the day's interview but also of the others coming back and producing more and more verbal arguments, that man stood unmoved, enduring their immense loquacity, hemmed in by the Celts.

After dwelling on his patience both in answering and in listening, while he stood like a statue often till the small hours, she points out:

And they all when weary went often away and rested, and went in again reluctantly. Indeed after a while none of his own attendants were capable of such prolonged standing immovable, but all in turns shifted from one leg to the other; and one would sit down and another would bend his head and prop it up, and a third would lean against the wall. In face of this great fatigue the Emperor alone was staunch … For as the interview was with myriads of men, each one spoke much … and one departing handed on the talk to another and he passed it to a third and he again to a fourth. And for them the standing was at intervals, but he had limitless standing, up to the first or second cock-crowing. Then he rested a little, but when the sun rose again he seated himself on his throne and once more there were other labours and redoubled contests succeeding to those of the night.

All this brought on the pain in his feet. 'But he was so patient that he never said a murmuring word … and if in any way a word of faint-heartedness escaped his lips, straightway he used the sign of the cross against the abominable demon, saving: "Avaunt from me, wicked one."'

To set with this picture of passive endurance we get in the next chapter a graphic description of the Emperor disabled from riding by gout, but brave and active as ever:

As if forgetting the pain that oppressed him he started on the road leading to Nicaea in a covered chariot, holding on to the basket frame … with his right hand. Then the soldiers, taking up their spears on their shoulders …, hastened in companies after him, forming a row on each side. Some marched alongside, some preceded him, some followed, rejoicing in his expedition against the barbarians but sorrowing for the pain that kept him from riding. He however spurred them all to courage by signs and words, smiling and speaking to them with sweetness.²²⁶

In Book XV, while the account of Alexius' Orphanage is full of sound information uninterestingly stated,²²⁷ the description of the execution of Basil the Bogomile is quite horribly vivid.²²⁸ After the heretic had been sentenced to death the Emperor

kindled an immense fire in the Hippodrome. Now an immense trench had been dug and a mass of logs, all tall trees heaped up, appeared a mountain in composition. Then when the pyre was lighted the crowd came silently together in numbers on the floor of the arena and on the steps, all waiting to see what was going to happen. On the other side a cross had been erected and a choice given to the impious man, if perchance fearing the fire and changing his mind he should go to the cross, so that then he might become free from the furnace. And the multitude of the heretics was present, beholding their leader Basil. But he showed himself contemptuous towards every punishment and threat, and when he was some way off he laughed at the pyre and talked extravagantly, saying that angels would snatch him from the midst of the fire, and he chanted that word of David's: 'It shall not come nigh thee, only with thine eyes shalt thou see.' But when the crowd stood aside and allowed him freely to see that terrible sight of the pyre (for from some distance he perceived the fire and saw the flame rising and as it were thundering, and sending out fiery fragments which rose to the height of the stone pyramid standing in the middle of the arena), then that bold man seemed to turn coward towards the fire and to be troubled. For he rolled his eyes often and struck his hands together and smote his thigh as though entirely confounded. Yet even when he was in this state at the mere sight, he was as though of adamant. For neither did the fire soften his iron soul nor did the instructions of the Emperor transmitted to him charm him, but either boundless folly seized him through his present need and misfortunes, and he was thus astray in mind and could not take any decision whatever about the best thing to do, or else, which seems more probable, the devil that had seized his soul poured profound darkness on him. So that abominable Basil stood helpless against every threat and every fear, and now gaped towards the pyre, now towards the bystanders. And to all he truly appeared mad, neither hastening to the pyre nor turning altogether back, but he stuck fast and was immovable on the spot where he had first arrived. Now when much talk was going on and his extravagant discourses were borne about on every tongue, the executioners feared lest perhaps the demons round Basil might do some strange wonder by the permission of God, and this scoundrel might be seen coming into some very public place unharmed from the midst of so great a fire, and the last error might be worse than the first. So they resolved to make an experiment. For as he talked extravagantly and boasted that he would be seen unharmed in the midst of the fire, they took up his gown and said: 'Let us see if the fire will not catch thy clothes.' And straightway they threw it into the middle of the furnace. However Basil was so entirely buoyed up by the demon that was deceiving him as to say: 'See the gown flying up into the air.' They then understanding what the stuff was from its hem lifted him and thrust him, clothes and shoes and all, into the midst of the furnace. And to such an extent did the flame (as though enraged against him) devour the impious man, that there was neither smell nor any other novel appearance in the smoke, except only a fine smoky line in the middle of the flame. For even the elements are roused up against the impious, but they truly spare those dear to God, as once they yielded and submitted to those God-beloved youths in Babylon, and the fire enclosed them like some golden bed. Therefore before those who had raised him had got this deceiver Basil in the right position, the flame seemed to leap forward to seize that ungodly man. As for the remaining number, all who shared in the corruption of Basil, the crowd standing by was panting and struggling to throw them also on the fire, but the Emperor did not allow it, and ordered them to be shut up in the porches and colonnades of the Great Palace. And when this was done the spectators dispersed.

Finally in the same Book parts of Alexius' last illness are made to stand out before us as though they had happened yesterday.²³⁰ 'Then at that time every doctor was summoned and the illness of the Emperor was laid before them as a subject of discussion. And they were parted and divided in opinions, and one diagnosed one thing and one another and each tried to adapt the treatment to the diagnosis.' The sick man's gasping for breath, with 'some pitying sleep' only serving to increase the choking, the failure of phlebotomy and cautery and drugs, even though the family for a time was wild with joy over the apparent success of a 'remedy with pepper' and consequently offered up a χᾳ̑ριστήριον to God, the restlessness that made him crave to be carried from room to room, what nurse or doctor is not alive to the modernness of it all? We can almost see the princess Anna, 'despising philosophy and learning', trying to get liquid down the patient's swollen throat, or feeling his pulse and watching his breathing in momentary expectation of the end. We have all been acquainted with doctors who 'dissembled over the crisis, and suggested hopes that did not appear sound' in order to prevent some devoted wife from breaking down. Even in the present age of trained nurses we can still parallel the loving daughter who holds up her dying father so that he may drink, sprinkles him in his faintness with rose water and tactfully stands between him and her anguished mother to screen her from the sight of the death agony. The picture has a poignant pathos which cannot be altogether destroyed even by the wretched state of the text, or still more by the rhetorical bombast of Anna's peroration, as of a dirge made to order. She was a princess and a scholar writing a language she did not speak, and bitter personal resentments cumber her style still further, but under it all any one not morally deaf can detect the cry of genuine grief. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.

Such then is a catalogue of Anna Comnena's outstanding passages, and the number may be said to err greatly on the side of under-statement. Are they not enough to entitle any writer to rank among the great historians, among those who make the dry bones of past ages live?

Sir William Ramsay in one of his books²³¹ has a passage which may be justly applied to our authoress. He speaks of 'historical work of the highest order, in which a writer commands excellent means of knowledge either through personal acquaintance or through access to original authorities, and brings to the treatment of his subject genius, literary skill, and sympathetic historical insight into human character and the movement of events'. Anna Comnena certainly had excellent means of knowledge, she certainly had literary skill; her characters live for us, and she shows the 'infinite capacity for taking pains' with which genius has been identified. Surely no more is needed to give her forever on Parnassus the piace which her own age awarded to her as the Tenth Muse.

Notes

¹ 2nd ed., p. 14.

² This want has, since we went to press, been supplied by Dr. Elizabeth Dawes. (The Alexiad, Kegan Paul, London, 1928.)

³Anna Komnena, Rastatt, 1868-71.

⁴Alexis I^er Comnène, Paris, 1900.

⁵ Sér. II, p. 52.

⁶ XIII. 12, p. 416.

⁷ 2nd ed., Vol. I, p. 226 note 1.

⁸ Since this was written, a charming little sketch of Anna and her times by Naomi Mitchison has appeared in the Representative Women series. (Anna Comnena; G. Howe, London, 1928.)

⁹ I. 1, p. 3.

¹⁰Chron., Isaac Comn. Byz. T., pp. 221-4=Al. III. 8, pp. 89 sqq….

¹¹ XIV. 7, p. 447.

¹² The question of date is discussed in Ch. 62….

¹³ It remains in Norman hands till Robert's death in 1085 (VI. 6, p. 163).

¹⁴ For chronology see Ch. 62….

¹⁵ There appear to have been two spoliations and only one restitution. The matter is obscure and is discussed in Chs. 38 and 45….

¹⁶Op. cit., p. 106, note.

¹⁷P. G. 126, col. 293-7.

¹⁸ In the summer of 1096 (if we accept Riant's date of January 1097 for Letter 71 in his Inventaire des lettres historiques des Croisades; Arch, de l'Orient latin I, pp. 136-40.) We find Alexius prevented by infirmitas maxima from going to Durazzo to meet the Crusaders. In his later years he was, as is well known, a martyr to gout.

¹⁹ This is filial exaggeration; see Ch. 65….

²⁰ His identity will be discussed below….

²¹ On the question of St. Gilles' oath, see Ch. 68….

²² Anna, here at variance with the Latin chroniclers, calls it a 'Nail'. See Ch. 68….

²³ Chalandon (op. cit., p. xvii) calls this 'La croisade de 1101'.

²⁴Ibid., p. xviii. He believes this incident in Ch. 10 to be referable to 1099, and the aid brought by the Genoese fleet in Ch. 11 to have reached the Crusaders in 1104….

²⁵ Chalandon (op. cit., p. 274) has a sinister explanation for her presence in camp. See Ch. 37….

²⁶ Cf. Anna Dalassena in Book II and the Empress Maria in Book IX….

²⁸ He was still alive in 1094, when she was ten years old (IX. 5-8).

²⁹ XIV. 4, p. 437.

³⁰ XV. 11, p. 503. Even Zonaras and John's admirer Nicetas represent him as taking his dying father's ring as a gift or a theft, and then absenting himself from his death-bed and funeral in his desperate desire to make his own position strong.

³¹ XIV. 3, p. 433.

³² II. 2, p. 45. It was 'unjust and unprofitable' for the Emperor Botaniates to put aside the lawful claims of Constantine.

³³Hyle, Pref., p. 10.

³⁴ XII. 4, p. 356.

³⁵ In the account of his being crowned (as she had been before) she speaks of the throne as his natural inheritance, which his father would wish to leave him, and in the treaty between Alexius and Bohemund, she takes it as the natural thing for the 'ardently longed for' and 'deeply loved' John to be associated with his father (XIII. 12; so XV. 11, p. 503).

³⁶ The Anon. Syn. Chron. (B. G. Med. VII, pp. 185-7) keeps up this fiction of the 'choice' of an Emperor; John is 'proclaimed at the hands of the subjects'.

³⁷ N. H. Baynes, Byz. Emp., p. 64….

³⁸Empire Byzantin, Vol. II, p. 36.

³⁹ Anna says προσήκων ᾳ̑ὐτῳ̑ κᾳ̑τὰ γένος (II. 2, p. 45). Theodulus Synadenus had married his sister (Scyl. Hist., p. 867 B), and Gelzer assumes that he had made their son his heir; G. B. L., p. 1014.

⁴⁰ II. 12, p. 67. The word γνήσιος is one of the many referring to relationship which Anna uses in a non-classical sense, not as 'legitimate', but 'near of kin', cf. XII. 7, p. 365; XIII. 9, p. 401), or even merely 'intimate', with no idea of kinship at all (VI. 4, p. 157; X. 4, p. 278; XIII. 5, p. 390). A similar use of derivatives of γνήσιος, indicating close connexion by blood, occurs twice in the Preface to Niceph. Bryennius' Hyle. It might well be that Anna applies 'belonging by race', said of Synadenus with regard to Botaniates (II. 2, p. 45), to a connexion through women, for the imperial 'kinsmen' included, in her loose usage, what we might call 'in-laws'….

⁴¹ II. 7, p. 58. In I. 15, p. 37, Anna makes the interesting statement that 'neither the Greek people … nor the army would have admitted the barbarian Robert to the throne'.

⁴² II. 1, p. 43. He had been Duke of Antioch, 1074-9. See Schlumberger, Sigillographie de l'Empire byzantin, p. 308. But cf. Chalandon, op. cit., p. 41, note 4.

⁴³ II. 8, p. 59.

⁴⁴ II. 2, p. 45.

⁴⁵John G., 2, p. 4. The views of Nicetas Acom. as to succession rights correspond closely with those of John Cinnamus, who makes the dying John II say (Hist. I. 10, p. 14) that Emperors legally bequeathed their thrones … usually to their eldest sons. In this instance, however, he chose Manuel the younger son as being (a) more suitable, (b) predestined by portents, and if neither of his sons had seemed to him fit to reign he would have chosen some one else. In any case his principal subjects had to ratify his choice.

⁴⁶ See the less positive account in Anon. Syn. Chron., loc. cit.

⁴⁷John C., 12, pp. 29-31.

⁴⁸Hyle, Pref., p.8. Cf. note 5 on p. 28.

⁴⁹ Theodore Prodromus brings forward the same plea in his Èpithalamium for Anna Comnena's two sons (P. G. 133, col. 1400). We are reminded of the union of York and Lancaster in the marriage of Henry VII. It is curious that Anna makes no capital whatever out of her father's relationship to the previous Comnenus Emperor; per-haps Isaac's two years of reign seemed negligibly short. In any case her plea for her father, if put into words, would have been: 'The Empire needed a strong man and got him in Alexius: the usurper may be forgotten in the hero.' But it was undoubtedly the fear lest Ducas claims might be over-emphasized which led Alexius, supported by his mother, to have himself crowned first alone, though in the end he had to yield to his connexions by marriage and permit the coronation of Irene Ducas his wife (III. 2)….

⁵⁰ III. 1-4. So at an earlier date Anna Dalassena had feared for herself and her children when her husband John Commenus refused to succeed his brother Isaac on the throne (Nic. Bry. I. 5, p. 19) and the crown passed to another family.

⁵¹ III. 1, p. 71.

⁵² III. 4; VI. 8; IX. 5-8.

⁵³ IV. 5, p. 112, and 6, p. 117….

⁵⁴ IV. 5, p. 112; VII. 2, p. 190, and 3, pp. 195-8; IX. 5-end.

⁵⁵ IX. 6, p. 256.

⁵⁶ IX. 8, p. 261.

⁵⁷ See Du Cange's note on X. 2, p. 271 C.

⁵⁸ e.g. XII. 5.

⁵⁹ VI. 6, p. 162.

⁶⁰ XI. 8, p. 332; XIV. 2, pp. 424 and 428.

⁶¹ Callicles' Poem XX is put into the mouth of John, and hints darkly at 'envy', 'rough paths', 'upraised arms', and the like, which had temporarily impeded his rise to power. But this is too vague to justify Sternbach's note that Irene's 'dolosa consilia' against her son 'manifesto significantur'.

⁶²Op. cit.

⁶³ X. 4, p. 279.

⁶⁴ III. 1, p. 72. E. Kurtz (B. Z. XVI, pp. 87-93) gives a poem of Theodore Prodromus on the death of Theodora, daughter-in-law of Anna Comnena, in which Theodora is said to have been brought up by Anna and by Anna's mother Irene, 1. 36 sqq. For the story of Anna's other daughterin-law he refers to Zonaras, XVIII. 28. She came to Constantinople in 1118 'um, wie wir in Anbetracht zahlreicher analogen Fälle hinzufügen können, hier bis zur Erreichung des heiratsfahigen Alters unter der Obhut ihrer zukünftigen Schwiegermutter erzogen zu werden'.

⁶⁵ IX. 5, p. 255, and 8, p. 261.

⁶⁶Epit. XVIII. 24.

⁶⁷Bibl. Chron., Pt. IV, p. 334.

⁶⁸ She refers to this again in IX. 10, p. 266, and XV. 7, p. 486; also XV. 11. More will be said of her education later on.

⁶⁹ So in V. 9, p. 148, the memory of her mother's learning is so potent as to 'pierce' her heart, and almost to lead her narrative astray. 'But the chain of History acts as a restraint.'

⁷⁰ Scylitzes (Hist., p. 853 D and 856 A and B) speaks of Michael's neglect in having let the Norman conquer Lombardy and Calabria, but seems to think this marriage-contract a wise measure for getting Robert's aid against the Turks.

⁷¹ Chalandon, op. cit., p. 63.

⁷² He was her cousin, through her mother, as well as her betrothed.

⁷³ This seems to be the meaning … implying a companion, here Constantine.

⁷⁴ III. 4, pp. 79, 80. Cf. I. 15, p. 36.

⁷⁵Op. cit., p. 32.

⁷⁶ XV. 9, p. 490.

⁷⁷ VI. 8, p. 166.

⁷⁸ … The familiar Greek idiom; cf. 'He rose again the third day' of our Creed, when we nowadays should say 'second'.

⁷⁹ So again in XV. 11, p. 496….

⁸⁰ Cf. the 'cheer leaders' of American teams.

⁸¹ i.e. the parents.

⁸²Neap. Reg. archiv. mon. V, quoted by Chalandon, op. cit. p. 139, note 1.

⁸³P. G. 126, col. 301. The Anon. Syn. Chron. is clearly wrong in saying (p. 177) that Alexius made John co-Emperor 'as soon as he was born'.

⁸⁴Epit., XVIII. 21.

⁸⁵ XIV. 7, p. 446, and cf. III. 1, p. 72.

⁸⁶Hist. Sic. III. 13 (S. S. Rer. ltal. V, p. 579).

⁸⁷Op. cit., p. 63, note 1.

⁸⁸ Malaterra's obviously untrue statements that Michael VII was deposed because his subjects dreaded his son's marrying one of the formidable Norman race, and that Constantine was 'usque ad exitum vitae exilio relegatus' by Botaniates, make one suspect that 'turpiter eunuchizatus' is equally unreliable.

⁸⁹ … Anna and Constantine as second cousins once removed would have stood to one another in the seventh degree by civil computation, and in the fourth by canon law. Impediments to marriage went up to but did not necessarily include the seventh degree of relationship. The civil computation seemed terribly lax to Peter Damianus, who died in 1072, not long before Anna's birth. He tells of his protest at Ravenna against the jurisconsults who had said: 'Septimam generationem canonica auctoritate praefixam ita debere intelligi, ut numeratis ex uno generis latere quattuor gradibus atque ex alio tribus' (which was exactly the case of Anna and Constantine) 'jure jam matrimonium posse contrahi' (De parentelae gradibus, P. L. 145, col. 191). By good fortune we have a novel of Alexius himself on the subject, published as No. 40 in Zachariae von Lingenthal's Jus Graeco-Romanum, Vol. III, p. 412, and commented on by the same learned writer in his Geschichte des gr.-röm. Rechts, p.67…. As Zachariae von Lingenthal gives the date of Alexius' novel as 1092 or 1107, may we not believe that Alexius issued this novel in 1092 to meet the situation of the betrothal between Anna and Constantine? She was then eight years old (her birthday being in December). Could controversy about her betrothal have been the true beginning of her 'sea of troubles'? We may assume that popular sentiment went against Alexius' decree, or it would not have been opposed by his chief ecclesiastical officer and repealed by his grandson….

⁹⁰ Zonaras says Constantine died ἐπὶ τῃ̑ μνηστείᾳ, which seems to imply that he kept his status of betrothed after he had lost that of co-sovereign. But the words might merely mean 'having never been more than betrothed', in which case his betrothal might have terminated with his imperial dignity, and before his death. All we know certainly from Zonaras is that when Anna was nubile her father married her to Niceph. Bryennius (Epit. XVIII. 22).

⁹¹ IX. 5-end. Zonaras does not mention Constantine in narrating this conspiracy.

⁹² X. 9, p. 295. Du Cange in his note puts Anna's birth three years too late.

⁹³ i.e. in Greek idiom her nephew Manuel I, who succeeded his father John II in 1143, and reigned till 1180.

⁹⁴… Probably used idiomatically for life in a cloister….

⁹⁵ Also of children. See the Prologue to her Will, lines 64 sqq.

⁹⁶John C. 3, p. 8.

⁹⁷P. G. 127, cols. 985-1120.

⁹⁸ Pref.3 and 4;I.4, p.9; III.1, 2, 3 and 8;VII.2, p.191, &c, ad lib. So even the heretic Italus in V. 8.

⁹⁹ XIII. 10. We may note that she cannot have been in love with Robert, who died before she was two; yet she awards the same unwilling admiration to him as to his son (VI. 7).

¹⁰⁰ 1. 7, p. 17; III. 10, p. 94; IX. 6, p. 258.

¹⁰¹ II. 2, p. 45.

¹⁰² IX. 6, p. 256. So Zonaras says of the husband of Alexius' daughter Theodora, a man not of noble birth, that he was 'in appearance a jewel' (XVIII. 22).

¹⁰³ XI. 7, p. 328. The idea that men in important stations should have an outward form to correspond is very well marked in Pref. 4, p. 6; II. 7, p.57; VI.7, p.165.

¹⁰⁴ 1.4, p.9, 5, p.11, 7, p.17, 10, pp.23, 24; II.7, p.57; VI.7, p.165; IX.6, pp.256, 257; XII.2, p.350; XIII.6, pp.394, 395; 10, p.403; XIV.8, p.450. Contrast III.3, p.77; V.8, p.146. Alexius was short, but impressive when seated (III. 3, p. 76; IX. 9, p. 263).

¹⁰⁵ Robert Guiscard was broad-shouldered, with a good figure, I. 10, p. 24. Bohemund was 'so to speak formed according to the Canon of Polyclitus' (XIII. 10, p. 403; cf. III. 3, p. 76). Leo and Nicephorus Diogenes had height and symmetry and 'the bloom of youth' IX.6, p.256; cf. Theocritus, Idyll 15, line 85….

¹⁰⁶ II.6, p.55; III.2, p.74; 3, p.76.

¹⁰⁷ III.2, p.74, and 3, p.76. It is curious to note that Psellus mentions as part of the 'unearthly beauty' of the baby Constantine Ducas Porphyrogenitus that his face 'was rounded off into an exact circle'. Chron. Mich. VII, Byz. T., p. 264; cf. Alexias, I.10, p.23, 12, p.27; III. 2, p.71.

¹⁰⁸ 1.10, p.24; III.2, p.74, 3, pp.76, 77, 8, p.88; IX.9, p.263; X.9, p.295, and 11, pp.302, 304; XI.2, p.315, and 12, p.342; XII.3; XIII.10, p.404; XIV.3, p.431, 7, p.449; XV.9, p.491. John Comnenus as a baby showed 'secretiveness and keenness' in his dark eyes (VI. 8, p. 168). Constantine Ducas, aged 7, has eyes 'not pale, but like a hawk's, and shining under his eyebrows as though the whites were golden' (III. 1, p. 71). Psellus, in describing him as a little child, says his eyes were γλαυκοί and large and full of 'calm', while his nose was like a vulture! Yet he agrees with Anna that the boy's beauty was more than earthly, οὐκ έπίγειον. The word γᾲλήνη as applied to Constantine's eyes by Psellus may have suggested Anna's comparison of her mother's eyes to a θάλαττᾳ̑ γᾲληνιω̑σ ε (III. 3, p. 77).

¹⁰⁹V. 8, p. 145.

¹¹⁰I.10, p.24; III.3, p.77; IX.6, p.257; XIII.10, p.404. Isaac Comnenus was sallow, and had a scanty beard (III. 3, p. 77). The hated John had a swarthy complexion and a nose 'neither snub nor hooked, but between the two' (VI. 8, p. 168). Cf. the golden hair, pink and white skin and 'sweetly piercing eyes' of the dead child in Callicles, Poem VI.

¹¹¹ The ordinary man wore θρὶξ κοσμική; the Bogomile heretics adopted the tonsure so as to counterfeit monastic virtue (XV. 8, p. 486). John Comnenus thought the way his courtiers cut their hair worthy of his personal attention (Nic. Ac. John C. 12, p. 31).

¹¹² IV.6, p.117.

¹¹³ Du Cange's note on XIII, 10, 404 B.

¹¹⁴ VI.7, p.165; XIII.10, p.404.

¹¹⁵ VIII.8, p.239. Cf. the small round beard of the philosopher Italus, a man of foreign birth (V. 8, p. 146). Bohemund shaved clean (XIII. 10, p. 404). See Du Cange's note on IV. 2, p. 106 B, though to mock some one εἰς τòν πώγωνᾲ may well be 'to his face', 'dans sa barbe'. Robert was only βᾳ̑θυπώγων to fulfil a vow, according to Ordericus Vitalis quoted by Du Cange in his note on VI. 7, p. 165 D. See John Ducas Caesar in II. 6, p. 56.

¹¹⁶ …XV, 11, p. 505.

¹¹⁷ XV. 11, p. 501.

¹¹⁸ III. 2 and 3.

¹¹⁹ We should say 'these latter' or 'our.' …

¹²⁰ So Thucydides, above. Polybius, Hist. IV. 2. 2, 3, attaches great importance to having 'assisted at some events ourselves, and heard others from those who saw them'.

¹²¹Hyle, Pref. p. 7.

¹²²Hist. I. 8, p. 11.

¹²³Hist, (beginning), p. 8.

¹²⁴Hist., Pref. 1, p. 4. We may compare the statements all through the Gesta Dei per Francos of Anna's Western contemporary, Guibert de Nogent, that the author has scrupulously tried to get at the truth, especially from eyewitnesses.

¹²⁵Pref.2, p.3; cf.XIV. 9, p.456. For X.8 she probably drew on her Maurocatacalo brother-in-law.

¹²⁶ VI.8, p.166; VII.3, p.198; XIII.8, p.398; XIV.7, pp.447, 448. So Nic. Bry. (II. 6, p. 44) quotes Alexius' words.

¹²⁷XIV.7, pp.447, 448.

¹²⁸ III.9, p.91; VII.3, p.198; VIII.2, p.225; IX.1, p.245.

¹²⁹ I. 6, p.16; III.1, p.72.

¹³⁰ III. 12, p.99; IV.6, p.117. This Latin envoy has been held to be the source on which William of Apulia drew for his Poema de rebus Normannorum. See Krumbacher, G B. L. p.275.

¹³¹ XIV.7, p.447.

¹³² XIV.7, pp.446, 448.

¹³³ J. Seger (op. cit. p. 33), points out that it was customary to publish each part of a work as it was written. Thus Attaliates (p. 322) promises a second part to his work, a promise which he never fulfilled.

¹³⁴ Pref. 3.

¹³⁵Ibid.

¹³⁶ 1.1, p.4; I.4, p.9; II.1, p.43; VII.2, p.191; X.2, p.271.

¹³⁷ Pref.3, p.4.

¹³⁸ J. Seger (pp. cit. p. 57) considers that Bryennius cannot wholly be trusted where his personal prejudices are concerned. He also believes that he wrote the adulatory earlier part, especially the Preface, while Alexius was alive, and changed his tone in Books III and IV after the Emperor's death (pp. 32, 33).

¹³⁹ Notably the episode of Godfrey de Bouillon at Constantinople (X. 9).

¹⁴⁰Hyle, Pref., p. 10; cf. p. 27 note 6, above.

¹⁴¹ J. B. Bury, reviewing F. Chalandon's Jean II et Manuel I(B. Z. XXII, p. 195).

¹⁴² Thus III.8, p.89 = Chron., Is.Comn., Byz.T., pp.221 sqq.; V.9, p.148 = Chron., Rom.Ill, Byz.T., p.26; VII.2, p.190 = Chron., Basil II, Byz. T., p.12.

¹⁴³ She probably got facts from Taticius, for after he left Antioch her story of the Crusade is meagre and far from accurate. Thus she calls Peter the Hermit a bishop, possibly confusing him with the Legate Bishop Adhémar of Le Puy, or with the Provençal priest Peter Bartholomew, said by the Latin Chroniclers to have found the sacred object, which she calls a 'Nail' and not a 'Lance'. Also she makes Godfrey de Bouillon be captured by the Turks (which he never was) at the battle of Rama, which took place a year after his death (XL 4, 6, 7). For her chronology in the matter of the Pisan fleet see p. 470, note 9, below.

¹⁴⁴ XIV. 9, p. 456. Cf. XII. 3, p. 354, and the whole tone of the Preface.

¹⁴⁵ This phrase occurs in the same connexion in VII. 3, p. 198.

¹⁴⁶ This is what she claims in the quotation from Polybius, Pref.2, p.3.

¹⁴⁷IX. 9, p. 265.

¹⁴⁸ XII. I, pp. 346, 347.

¹⁴⁹ VI. 7, p. 164.

¹⁵⁰ XII. 4, pp. 355 and 357; see pp. 85-86 above.

¹⁵¹Études d'hist. du moyen âge dédiées è Gabriel Monod, e d. E. Lavisse, Paris, 1896.

¹⁵²II.7, pp.58, 59; VII.4, p.199.

¹⁵³ II.12, p.68.

¹⁵⁴ X.5, p.284; XII.4, p.355.

¹⁵⁵ XV.2, p.464: 3, p.469. A complete list of the lacunae (even omitting the last chapter of all, where the text from p. 500 D to the end of p. 507 C is in a very bad state) would be too lengthy to give here. We may signalize as examples those at I.10, p.24 A; VI.7, p.164 A; IX.8, p.262 B; X.8, p.292 C; XII.5, p.359 A; XIII.I, p.379 A: 10, p.404 B; XIV.3, p.433 A: 5, p.439 A; XV.3, p.467 A. In XI.2, p.315, an important number is missing after στᾳ̑δίους.

¹⁵⁶ XV. 8, p. 489.

¹⁵⁷ XIV. 7. If the seclusion was as strict as this, it makes the researches into archives which Oster predicates for her a figment of his imagination.

¹⁵⁸ XI.II, p.340; XIV.5, p.439; XV.7, p.485.

¹⁵⁹ V.9, p.148.

¹⁶⁰ II.I, p.44.

¹⁶¹ III.2, p.72.

¹⁶²IX.6 p.257.

¹⁶³IX. 8, p. 262.

¹⁶⁴IX. 8, p. 261.

¹⁶⁵XIV. 3, pp. 431, 433.

¹⁶⁶XIV. 4, p. 434.

¹⁶⁷XIV. 4, p. 437….

¹⁶⁸ Inaccuracies, i.e. cases where she disagrees with facts known to us from other sources, do not come under this head, and are dealt with in various connexions as they come up.

¹⁶⁹ See p. 298, below.

¹⁷⁰ Chalandon (Alexis I^er, p. 37) speaks of their 'continuelles incursions'.

¹⁷¹ First described XIV. 8, after being mentioned as early as Books VI. and VII.

¹⁷² So Maria, Irene's mother, in II. 5, p. 54 and 6, p. 55; Patriarch Cosmas in II. 12, p. 68, and III. 3, p. 75; Bohemund, appearing first in I. 14, p. 34, but not called Saniscus till IV. 6, p. 115; Pacurianus, whose Grand Domesticate is promised in II. 4, p. 70, and mentioned in IV. 6, p. 115, but has to be inferred in IV. 4, p. 108; Basil Curticius in I. 9, p. 21, and V. 5, p. 139, possibly also XII. 5, p. 359; Taticius, who plays a big part from IV. 4 onwards, but comes in as an unknown person might in IX. 9, p. 263. If the John Taronites of XIII. 1, p. 376, is the same as the one in X. 2, p. 273, and XII. 7, he is not described till his third appearance (but see Du Cange's note on the third passage).

¹⁷³ Anna says Cantacuzenus' scouts 'were barbarians, as my story has already shown' (XIII. 5, p. 391); it is the first mention of the fact. The letter of Alexius to Henry of Germany refers to a previous 'agreement' of which we know nothing (III. 10, pp. 93, 94). A defeat of Cabasilas is alluded to but never described (XIII. 5, p. 390, and 7, p. 395).

¹⁷⁴ Bohemund is made to speak of Norman defeats which Anna has never recorded (XIII. 12).

¹⁷⁵ In II. 2 he chooses as his successor a kinsman,… probably his brother-in-law Theodulus or a nephew. In II. 5 we hear of a young ἔ;γγονος of his, betrothed to Alexius' niece. In II. 12 he offers to adopt Alexius because he himself has 'neither son nor brother nor any near relation'. In IV. 5 Anna mentions the courage and in IV. 6 the death of a Nicephorus Synadenus as quite a new character, though he must have been related to the Synadenus of Book II, or identical with him if we assume a slip in the Christian name….

¹⁷⁶e.g. Musaces in IX. 8, Alacaseus in X. 4, and Pegasius in X. 10; Bacchenos in XII. 7, and the second Contostephanus, who causes the name to be put abruptly in the plural, in XII. 8, p. 368, though this Stephanus Contostephanus is not mentioned individually till XIII.

¹⁷⁷ e.g. Bohemund's fleet seems to be twice burnt (XIII. 2, p. 380, and 6, pp. 393, 394). Roger, Robert Guiscard's son, is in two places at once (I. 16, p. 37; III. 12, p. 97; V. 3, p. 131). Pargiaruch is Sultan before his father has died (VI. 10, p. 172: 12, p. 179).

¹⁷⁸ VII. 3, p. 196; X. 2, p. 271; cf. Nie. Bry. I. 6, p. 20, and II. 29, p. 66.

¹⁷⁹ IX. 6, p. 257, and 8, p. 261.

¹⁸⁰IX. 9, p. 264.

¹⁸¹ X. 8, p. 290: 11. p. 305. This is accepting Du Cange's identification of the two, but Prof. Grégoire believes (Byzantion, Tome III, 1926, pp. 511-17) that the κᾳμης Πρεβέντζᾳ̑ς of X. 8 is not St. Gilles but the Πριγκιπάτος of XIII. 4, Bohemund's right-hand man sent ahead to prepare his way, as Bohemund after crossing in X. 8 does not come on to Constantinople till X. 11. See p. 465, note 2.

¹⁸² XI. 7, p. 328; XII. 1, p. 346; the name of Alexius' envoy differs in the two stories, though the same man may be meant, and we may assume the incident to be one, not two, as has been said above.

¹⁸³ X. 2, p. 273; XV. 4, p. 471.

¹⁸⁴ VIII. 9; XI. 6, p. 326; XII. 7.

¹⁸⁵ IV. 6, p. 117, and XII. 2; IX. 3 and XI. 5. The solution may be in the case of Tzachas that νεκᾳς (like the 'lifeless' of Jane Austen and Thackeray) means not 'dead', but 'fainting', or as we might say 'for dead', which is possibly the real translation of Acts xx. 9, where Eutychus when νεκρᾳς was revived by St. Paul. As to Aspietes we must suppose that in the earlier passage he does not 'give up his life' like the Zacharias with whom he is coupled, but merely πλήττετᾳ̑ι καιίᾳ̑ν, which we see from XII. 2, p. 350 does not invariably mean receiving a mortal blow, any more than ἔξᾳ̑ιμος points to death.

¹⁸⁶ 1. 14, p. 35; III. 12, p. 98. In IV. 2, p. 105; V. 3, p. 131, Anna writes as if Robert himself had taken it, but it is a clear case of 'qui facit per alium facit per se'. He seems to have touched there with his army (I. 14, p. 34; III. 12, p. 98; IV. 4, p. 108).

¹⁸⁷ V. 7, p. 143; VI. 5, p. 158.

¹⁸⁸ V I. l, p. 1 5 3.

¹⁸⁹ VI. 5, p. 159.

¹⁹⁰III. 11, p. 96.

¹⁹¹ VI. 10, p. 174.

¹⁹²We must assume that he succeeded, for in VII. 7, p. 205, four years later, we read of Abul Cassim 'arming against Nicomedia', and in X. 5, p. 282, of the Turks 'pressing on it' in their raids.

¹⁹³XIV. 4, and 7, p. 449; XV. 11, p. 496.

¹⁹⁴ It is very striking, as we shall see further in Ch. 73, how Anna will use a word or phrase, which seems to be running in her head, very frequently for the space of a few chapters or of one Book, and then never again. This points to the same conclusion.

¹⁹⁵ Especially Cecaumenus and Nicephorus Bryennius.

¹⁹⁶ e.g. that fortune is fickle (III. 1, p. 71; X. 2, p. 272; XII. 3, p. 353; cf Zonaras, XVIII. 29); and youth more rash than age (III. 7, p. 86; VIII. 7, p. 237; 9, p. 241; IX. 4, p. 252; XV. 5, p. 475); that women are cowardly (XV. 2, p. 463) and weak characters unstable (II. 3, p. 48; 9, p. 61); that it is easy to criticize, hard to achieve (Pref. 2, p. 2; VI. 7, p. 166; XII. 3, p. 353); that a noble death is better than ignoble life (VII. 3, p. 197), &c.

¹⁹⁷ e.g. I. 2, p. 6; 3, p. 7; 7, p. 17 (cf. Nie. Bry., Pref., p. 2); II. 4, p. 49; III. 1, p. 72; 2, p. 74; VI. 8, p. 168; X. 9, p. 294; XIII. 1, p. 378; XIV. 7, p. 413. We have spoken at length of her attitude to the Crusaders and to the horrors of false doctrine. Her statement (XV. 10, p. 494) that 'the elements' attack the impious and spare the pious is translated in full a little later on.

¹⁹⁸ Thus her acceptance of the jealousy of kinsmen or fellow-soldiers as the usual thing seems to point to unfortunate incidents in her own experience (VIII. 3, p. 225; X. 6, p. 286).

¹⁹⁹ We may quote the passage in IX. 9, p. 264, as being finely worded: 'Such are the ways of men. For towards the man whom to-day they think worthy of blessings and furnish with an escort and hold in honour, when they see the die of life turned upside down for him, they have no shame in showing quite a different face.' We may compare Keble's lines in the Christian Year (Advent Sunday, stanza 5):

'Hosanna' now, to-morrow 'Crucify',
The changeless burden still of their rude, lawless cry.

²⁰⁰1. 16, p. 39 D.

²⁰¹III. 5, p. 80 B. and C.

²⁰²X. 11, p. 303 A.

²⁰³ XV. 3….

²⁰⁴ I. 7, 8, 11.

²⁰⁵ II. 3, 5, 6.

²⁰⁶ III. 1, 2, 3, 7, 8.

²⁰⁷ III. 7, 8, 12.

²⁰⁸IV. 7.

²⁰⁹ V. 8, 9.

²¹⁰ VI. 2.

²¹¹ VI. 8.

²¹² VII. 2.

²¹³ VII. 4.

²¹⁴ VII. 9.

²¹⁵ VII. 11.

²¹⁶ VIII. 5, 8.

²¹⁷ IX. 5-10, especially ch. 9.

²¹⁸ X. 5-11, especially 11, pp. 301-4. The story of the insolent Frankish Count in ch. 10 is admirably told, as is also that of the fighting Latin priest hurling stones and barley-loaves in ch. 8.

²¹⁹ XI. 10.

²²⁰ XI. 12.

²²¹ XII. 3 and 6.

²²² XIII. 3.

²²³ XIII. 9, 10.

²²⁴ See pp. 473-4 above.

²²⁵ XIV. 4.

²²⁶ XIV. 5, p. 438.

²²⁷ XV. 7.

²²⁸ XV. 10 ….

²³⁰ XV. 11. The vividness and the conviction it carries have been dwelt on already, but repetition must be pardoned on a point so vital to our whole estimate of the writer.

²³¹St. Paul the Traveller, p. 2.

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