The Alexiad of Anna Comnena

A revised edition of Anna Komnene's Alexiad, to replace our existing 1969 edition. This is the first European narrative history written by a woman - an account of the reign of a Byzantine emperor through the eyes and words of his daughter which offers an unparalleled view of the Byzantine world in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

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LibraryThing member AlexTheHunn

Primary resource in Byzantine studies. Anna Comnena writes of her father's exploits. She recounts battles and intrigues. She gives Byzantine view of western Christians.

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LibraryThing member Poleaxe

Wow. Where to begin with this book? After reading numerous pieces on the Crusades, I noticed that one was invariably reading quotes from the same chronicles over and over again. I took it upon myself to try and read as many of these chronicles as I could. Pieces such as [The Itinerarium

Perigrinorum Et Gesta Regis Ricardi], [The Chronicle of Fulcher of Chartres], and Joinville were always there, along with this little piece. Written by the daughter of Emperor Alexius (1081-1118), it tries ever so hard to be taken as a serious historical record to the life and reign of of this Byzantine leader. And it many ways it succeeds. But in as many ways, it too, falls short.
Anna tries very hard indeed to nullify the reader's knowledge of her closeness with her father by attempting to frame the work as a purely un-biased histography. She fails rather hard on this attempt. It nearly approaches humor, the amount of praise that she heaps upon Alexius and his wife, her mother. It gets rather tiresome to hear repeatedly just how God-like this man was.
All in all, this is an interesting book. Very little of it deals with the 1st Crusade which was a bit of shock to me. It is very informative for the details that are given about Alexius life (the intrigue and military actions) and those role-players that surrounded him. As a military history piece I would actually give it 4 stars, but overall I can only muster 3.

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LibraryThing member paperloverevolution

I enjoyed the undercurrent of gleeful malice and all of the lurid eye-gouging, but I didn't understand why everyone seemed to have the same name, why they had all married each other's cousins, and why they all wanted to kill each other. The footnotes assumed I'd need help figuring out who the

Gorgon was, and other references to Greek mythology, but provided no assistance with any of the Byzantine names, titles, dates, or battles. Not even a time line. I suppose that if I had known anything whatsoever about Byzantine history, I may have enjoyed the book more. As it was, all I learned was that they were really, really into gouging out eyes.

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LibraryThing member DinadansFriend

I have a better opinion of this source than Edward Gibbon, who was just not fond of Byzantine Literary culture. Anna was a child of the emperor Alexius Comnenus who re-organized the empire after the disaster at Manzikert. This is also a basic book for the vision of the Western crusaders, and also

as a social history of the later Empire. I believe this is an able translation, and hope more people will read one of the first books about Medieval Europe from an outside stance.

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LibraryThing member EricCostello

Anna Comnena's history of the reign of her father, the Emperor Alexius. After a while, the sheer blizzard of invasions, rebellions and betrayals gets to be a trifle overwhelming, and with so many characters changing sides, getting blinded, or whatnot, one can be forgiven, I think, if one is

confused. You certainly get an insight into how, well, Byzantine the Byzantine Empire was. Bitter old woman in her dotage.

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