Anna Komnene's Alexiad is one of the masterpieces of Byzantine historiography. It is a long and detailed history of the reign of emperor Alexios Komnenos (1081– 1118), written by his daughter in the middle of the twelfth century. The Alexiad is written in artful classicizing Attic Greek. Anna's history creates a glowing portrait of Alexios as a great hero, ultimately arguing that he should be considered the greatest Roman emperor ever.

The Alexiad is organized into fifteen substantial books. Anna's coverage of events is uneven, with more detail given to the earlier parts of Alexios's long reign. The two Norman invasions of the empire at Dyrrachium, first by Robert Guiscard in 1081 and then his son Bohemond in 1108, are treated in great detail and create a strong narrative structure for the whole work. The final ten years of Alexios's career, after his defeat of Bohemond, are treated with comparative brevity. Anna also describes Alexios's wars against Cumans, Pechenegs, and Turks, but gives greater emphasis to his conflicts with western Europeans. Anna occasionally places her discussions of events where they suit the arc of her narrative rather than in strict chronological order. For instance, the trial of Basil for the Bogomil heresy is thought to have taken place before 1104, but in her text it is placed immediately prior to Alexios's death in 1118. This change to the chronology of the heresy trial highlights Alexios's concern for proper orthodoxy as the history is coming to a close.

Anna appears to have played with the conventions of classicizing history writing to make her Alexiad more like a heroic epic. The title, Alexiad, recalls Homer's Iliad. Anna frequently uses similes and Homeric vocabulary in her writing. Her characterization of Alexios as a wily helmsman, skillfully steering the ship of state through a sea of constant storms, endlessly buffeted by crashing waves of disaster, draws on imagery from Homer's Odyssey.