34. Anna Komnene — Europe's First Female Historian
Anna Komnene
If you were banished by your brother to a convent, how would you use all that “free” time? 12th-century Byzantine princess Anna Komnene put pen to paper to record her version of the family history in a 15-volume work, The Alexiad, modeled after the classic Greek epics she loved. We’ll give you the highlights of this Game of Thrones-rivaling family saga that Edmund White dubbed “an engaging document of a crucial era.”
Discussed in this episode:
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbons