Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/70

60 , she exclaimed that “nature had mistaken their sexes, for he ought to have been the woman.” The plot being discovered, Anna forfeited her property and her fortune, though, by the clemency of her brother, she escaped with her life. Excluded by her base conduct from the enjoyments of court, she employed her solitude in writing the Alexiad—a history, in Greek, of her father's life and reign. The production is still extant, and forms part of the celebrated collection of the Byzantine Historians. Her style is extravagantly rhetorical, diffuse, and panegyrical. In her account of the first Crusade she is often at variance with the Latin authorities. The Alexiad, in fifteen books, was first published at Augsburg in 1610; but the best edition is that of Schopen, with a Latin translation (Bonn, 1839, 2vols. 8vo), and Schiller in his Historic Memoirs gives a German translation.

ANNA IVANOVNA, Empress of Russia, daughter of Ivan, brother of Peter the Great, was born in 1693, and married in 1710 to the duke of Courland, who died the following year. After the death of Peter II., in 1730, the imperial council offered the vacant throne to Anna on the following conditions : She was to govern according to the decisions of the supreme council, and she was not allowed, without its consent, either to declare war or to conclude peace, to impose new taxes, to grant any important office of the state, to dispose of crown lands, to contract a matrimonial alliance, or to nominate a successor to the throne. She was also not to punish any noble, or to confiscate any one s property without a legal sentence. Anna signed these conditions without any demur ; but after her arrival at Moscow, a numerous party, jealous of the authority which this con stitution, imitated from that of Sweden, gave to the supreme council, or rather to the families of the Princes Dolgorouki and Galitzin, of whose members it was chiefly composed, petitioned the empress to assume the autocracy of her pre decessors. Anna immediately complied with this request, and the framers of the constitution either were banished to Siberia, or perished on the scaffold. Russia was governed in a most tyrannical and oppressive manner during the whole reign of Anna by her favourite Biren, who was made by her influence duke of Courland. According to Russian authorities, 20,000 victims of Biren s tyranny perished during Anna s reign of six years, and amongst them persons belonging to the highest ranks in the country. The principal events of Anna s reign were the voluntary restoration, in 1732, to Shah Nadir of the Russian provinces, Shirvan, Ghilan, and Mazanderan, acquired by Peter the Great, but which caused more expense than they yielded revenue to Russia; a Chinese embassy at St Petersburg, the only one that was ever sent to Europe; the assistance given to the elector of Saxony and king of Poland, Augustus III., against his competitor Stanislaus Leszczinski, supported by France; a Russian army sent to the assistance of the Emperor Charles VI. against France; a war with Turkey from 1736 to 1739, which, notwithstanding several success ful campaigns, gave no advantage to Russia at the conclusion of peace ; and an advance made into Central Asia by the establishment of the Russian protectorate over the khan of the Kirghises, who, with the assistance of Russian officers, conquered Khiva, but failed to maintain himself there. Anna died in 1740. Her reign is considered as a period of transition from the old Muscovite semi-barbarian manners to the polish, though not the civilisation, of the West.

ANNA,, a painter of some repute, who flourished during part of the 16th and 17th centuries. He was born at Venice, probably about 1560, and is said to have been of Flemish descent. The date of his death is uncertain, but he seems to have been alive in 1639. For a number of years he studied under Leonardo Corona, and on the death of that painter completed several works left unfinished by him. In the opinion of many judges he surpassed his master in richness and mellowness of colour, though he was inferior to him in design. His own activity seems to have been confined to the production of pieces for several of the churches and a few of the private houses in Venice ; and though there exists no accurate list of his works, the old guide-books and descriptions of the city notice a considerable number of paintings by him. Scarcely any of these, however, have survived to the present time.

ANNABERG, a town of Saxony, situated in the Erzgebirge, about 1830 feet above the level of the sea, and at a distance of 1 8 miles south from Chemnitz, with which it is connected by railway. The chief importance of Annaberg is derived from its large lace and ribbon manufactories, the latter of which were first established in the town by Belgian Protestants, who were driven from their country by the tyranny of the duke of Alva. There are also extensive and valuable silver, tin, and cobalt mines in the neighbourhood. Population, 11,693.

ANNALS (Annales, from annus, a year), a concise historical record in which events are arranged chronologically, year by year. The chief source of information in regard to the annals of ancient Rome is a passage in Cicero (De Oratore, ii. 12, 52), which has been the subject of much discussion. He states that from the earliest period down to the pontificate of Publius Mucius Scajvola (circa ), it was usual for the Pontifex Maximus to record the events of each year on a white tablet (album), which was exhibited in an open place at his house, so that the people might read it. These records were called in Cicero's time the Annales Maximi. After the pontificate of Publius, the practice of compiling annals was carried on by various unofficial writers, of whom Cicero names Cato, Pictor, and Piso. The Annales have been generally regarded as the same with the Commentarii Pontijicum cited by Livy, but there seems reason to believe that the two were distinct, the Commentarii being fuller and more circumstantial. The nature of the distinction between annals and history is a subject that has received more attention from critics than its intrinsic importance deserves. The basis of dis cussion is furnished chiefly by the above quoted passage from Cicero, and by the common division of the work of Tacitus into Annales and Historian. Aulus Gellius, in the Nodes AtticoB (v. 18), quotes the grammarian Verrius Flaccus, to the effect that history, according to its etymology (ia-Toptiv,inspicere, to inquire in person), is a record of events that have come under the author s own observation, while annals are a record of the events of earlier times arranged according to years. This view of the distinction seems to be borne out by the division of the work of Tacitus into the Historic, relating the events of his own time, and the Annales, containing the history of earlier periods. It is more than questionable, however, whether Tacitus himself divided his work under these titles. The probability is, either that he called the whole Annales, or that he used neither designation. (See .) So far as the dis tinction between annals and history is real, it seems to arise out of the more restricted conditions imposed upon the annalist as compared with the historian. A narrative strictly aunalistic must necessarily be a mere register of isolated facts, and not a record of historical processes. Confined at each stage within the narrow limit of a single year, it cannot trace the progress of events or exhibit their connection and interdependence, as is done in history. (See on this subject an ingenious though somewhat fanciful paper by Niebuhr contributed to the Rheinisches Museum, and translated by Thirlwall in the Cambridge Philological Museum, vol. ii.) In modern literature the title annals has been given to a large number of standard works which