Anna Comnena, the daughter of Alexius Comnenus I, by his wife Irene, was born at Constantinople in 1083. She devoted herself to the study of literature and philosophy, and was esteemed the most learned woman of her age. After the death of her father, she conspired to depose her brother, and to place the crown upon the head of her husband, Nicephorus Bryennius. Her plot being discovered, she lost all her influence at court, and employed the last ten years of her life in composing a history of her father's reign, called the "Alexiad." Died, 1148.

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