Sima Qian
A historian castrated rather than executed chooses disgrace so he can finish his book.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 10 years
- Known to
- ± 5 years
- Era
- Classical, Holocene
Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian, completed around 94 BCE, covers 2,000 years in 130 chapters, organised by annals, treatises, tables and biographies — a structure copied by every subsequent Chinese dynastic history. Having defended a disgraced general, he was offered execution or castration; he chose the latter, explicitly so the work would be completed. It includes accounts of merchants, assassins and jesters as well as emperors.