Anna Komnene’s Contribution to Greek Philosophy

The first major study of Aristotle and Plato was commissioned in the twelfth century, by Anna Komnene, daughter of Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos. While much of the work was done in Byzantine Greek, she had Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and some of Plato’s Dialogues translated into Latin for the benefit of scholars in Western Europe. The translation of Nicomachean Ethics eventually found its way to Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century. In twelfth century Constantinople, Anna Komnene was seen as a philosopher and an important scholar of Plato and Aristotle.