A review by spacestationtrustfund
The Alexiad by Anna Comnena

3.0

There are two main English translations of the Alexiad: the 1969 translation by E.R.A. Sewter, and the 1928 translation by Elizabeth A. Dawes. If you're not specifically studying the Alexiad, the best currently available in English in the 2009 revised edition of Sewter's translation: it's readable, relatively accurate, and includes a hefty introduction which discusses the context of Anna Komnene's life and the various manuscripts of the original text. Dawes's translation is in the public domain, and thus available online; I personally prefer Dawes's to Sewter's, primarily because Dawes intentionally used archaic language in order to mimic Anna Komnene's intentionally archaic Greek. Dawes's translation is far more literal than Sewter's, which reads much more like contemporary plain English.