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A.D. the succession in favour of her youngest daughter Anna; but his stubbornness or probity was proof against every entreaty, and in A. D. 1118 he bequeathed the throne to John, the eldest of his surviving sons, the best and greatest of the Comneni. Foiled in her intrigues, the Princess and her husband Nicephorus Bryennius conspired against her brother; but the plot having failed through the scruples or weakness of her colleague, she owed her life to the magnanimity of the Emperor.* Stung with indignation rather than remorse, she accepted of his pardon, but in terms which bespoke the boldness of her character; she exclaimed that nature, in the formation of herself and her husband, had mistaken the sexes, and endowed Bryennius with the soul of a woman. She continued to reside at the court till the death of Nicephorus, in a. D. 1137, when, having lost her best protector, and wearied with the world, she retired to a convent, and devoted the residue of her days to the composition of a memoir of her father.

This monument of filial tenderness, entitled the Alexiad, was the continuation of a history of the house of the Comneni, undertaken by her husband at the request of Irene, and continued * Gibbon, c. xlviii.

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till the accession of his father-in-law. Of her A.D. qualifications for the task, Anna speaks with confidence in her preface. " I," says she, "the child of an emperor, born and educated in the purple, no stranger to literature, but on the contrary, having sought with ardour to attain perfection in the graces of my native language, and having cultivated rhetoric, philosophy, and the sciences which strengthen the mind, (for thus may I, without an imputation of vanity, speak of those attainments for which I am indebted to heaven, to my own perseverance, and the aid of circumstances,) have undertaken to commemorate the deeds of my father, which merit not forgetfulness, nor to be swept by the tide of time into the ocean of oblivion." With this conception of her acquirements, Anna commenced and completed the life of her parent; a work whose analysis well displays the several traits which distinguished the mind of its author,-vanity, ambition, affection, and feebleness. Her style, though often graceful and polished, is flowery and poetic to excess, evincing the importance which she attached to having, as she herself observes, attuned her tongue to tones of Attic elegance; and her work, though interesting and valuable on the whole, must be read with caution, and a due

A.D. allowance for the foibles and feelings of its

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royal compiler.*

The reign of John Comnenus, or, as he was ironically termed in allusion to his personal ugliness, Calo John, is the most distinguished in the Byzantine annals; under his conduct the prowess of the Greeks seemed to have acquired a new and healthy vigour, and, perhaps, the greatest frailty of his character was an undue partiality for arms and military renown. Throughout his dominions he abolished the punishment of death, and seemed desirous to establish his authority not by terror but by kindness. During an administration of fiveand-twenty years, his tranquillity was unbroken by conspiracies or rebellion, and his virtues and honourable qualities have obtained for him the title of the Marcus Aurelius of Byzantium.

Zonaras, an officer of the imperial guard, whom domestic sorrows had driven for solace to

Harles, sec. v. p. 560. Schoell, 1. vi. c. 86. Fabricius, 1. v. c. v. 9.

Another royal author of this age was Isaac, brother to Anna, who, besides some unpublished Homeric Scholia, has left a work entitled, "Characters of the Greeks and Trojans who shared in the War of Troy," in which he describes, not the mental peculiarities of his heroes, but the complexion, constitution, figures, and powers of each. He was likewise author of a treatise on the omissions (apaλsiglévтα) of Homer.-Schoell, 1, vi. c. 79.

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the seclusion of a monastery, wrote, in his reign, A.D. his Annals, from the earliest ages of the world to the accession of Calo John, a production of high importance, as containing in its earlier pages extracts from the works of authors who have perished, and in its later details the personal evidence of the author. Owing to its necessary brevity, it is frequently imperfect and obscure; a defect which Zonaras attributes in his apology to the deficient and often conflicting evidence from whence he derived his materials.* But, almost with this solitary exception, letters, even under a prince so distinguished, were languishing and neglected; and however the study of their ancient language may have formed a portion of the educational studies of a few, we can trace no evidence of a living and healthy literature during the period of his government.

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Manuel, the youngest son and successor of A.D. Calo John, seems to have owed his elevation to the throne, to the possession of those manly and warlike qualities which distinguished his father. His long and disturbed reign was a series of vicissitudes and war, during which he exercised his arms on Mount Taurus, in the plains of Bulgaria, on the coasts of Greece, and

Berington, app. i. p. 589. Schoell, 1. vi. c. 84. Harles, sec. v. p. 558. Fabricius, 1. v. c. iv. 40. c. 38.

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A.D. on the seas of Sicily and Egypt. His intervals of repose were devoted to the profitless but still popular pursuits of theology and polemics; and when again, in A.D. 1147, the empire was overrun by a fresh host of Crusaders, more formidable still than their predecessors, he treated them with the same policy and prudence which had marked the conduct of Alexius. Amidst these commotions, and the atrocities which, in the close of this century, marked the Constantinopolitan annals, it is vain to expect the patronage, or search for the productions, of learning.* That a taste for the study of the ancient Greek still existed, even during this gloomy era, is, however, attested by the number of scholiasts who flourished under the five succeeding princes; and the labours of Eustathius and the Tzetzes, whilst evincing this prevalent disposition to reading and inquiry, argue, at the same time, the total corruption of the popular dialect of the day.

The works of Constantine Manasses, who, about the middle of this century, produced his Metrical Chronicle, and tale of Aristander and

From this censure almost the only exception is that of Cinnamus the historian, who composed a life of Calo John and Manuel, one of the most valuable volumes in the Byzantine Collection.