The World

The Caesars had destroyed themselves. In the years 68–9, there were three emperors before a fourth, Vespasian – an unpretentious old general nicknamed the Muleteer, who had helped conquer Britannia and whom the historian Suetonius described as looking ‘like a man always straining to have a shit’ – was hailed as emperor. At the time, he was crushing the Jewish rebels. In 70, his son Titus stormed Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple, leaving just the supporting walls of Herod’s magnificent edifice.^*

In 97, the triumphant Chinese paladin, Ban Chao, brother of the court historian, sent an envoy to visit Rome via Parthia. This pungently energetic general had taken his troops as far west as the shores of the Caspian Sea. While his brother Ban Gu wrote his history at court, and their talented sister Zhao married in their home province, Ban Chao always wanted to fight barbarians on the frontiers, telling his writer brother, ‘A brave man has no other plan but to … do something and become somebody in a foreign land.’ His mission was to seize the trade to Parthia and Rome – and break the Xiongnu. ‘If you don’t venture into the tiger’s lair,’ said Ban Chao. ‘You never catch its cubs.’

AUTHORESS AND THE PROTECTOR -GENERAL IN THE TIGER’S LAIR: BAN CHAO AND THE WISE ONE

In 75, the new Emperor Zhang, discouraged by the endless costs incurred in putting down the tribes in central Asia, recalled Ban Chao, who decided to disobey orders, having realized that to abandon the Western Region now would lose it for ever. Instead he advised Emperor Zhang that his new empire – like so many others – could be held with very few troops backed by local auxiliaries and by ostentatious displays of ferocity. While negotiating with a local chieftain, he heard that Xiongnu ambassadors had arrived to undermine his mission. He slaughtered the envoys and, brandishing their heads, he successfully concluded his negotiation with the now cooperative potentate. During another negotiation, when he saw that the chieftain was distracted by the unhelpful advice of his sorcerer, Ban Chao beheaded the sorcerer mid-conversation and then, unabashed, continued. Eventually he defeated the Xiongnu, and took the kingdoms of Kashgar and Khotan.

Ban encountered one people, the Yuezhi (Guishuang), who, defeated by the Xiongnu, rode southwards and built their own kingdom: these nomadic horsemen the Kushan – who practised skull deformation then – conquered Bactria and burst into northern India.^* Ban Chao defeated a Kushan army, but ultimately he made peace with these new players.

The Bans flourished as protégés of Zhang’s Empress Dou, who skilfully played the game of power, using accusations of witchcraft to destroy the crown prince, then, adopting the son of another concubine, forcing his mother to kill herself.^* The heir grew up believing that Empress Dou was his mother.

In 88, aged nine the boy succeeded his father as Emperor He. Dowager Empress Dou stayed in control, her brother Dou Xian ruling as general-in-chief or regent. But his arrogance offended everyone – even the boy emperor. Dou Xian won victories against the Xiongnu, which he celebrated with a ceremony at Yanran where an inscription written by Ban Gu was dedicated. Ban Gu was promoted to the regent’s secretary with the title marshal of the Black Warrior Gate, and was joined at court by his sister Zhao, now a widow. Refusing to marry again, she became a royal tutor in the imperial library.

In 92, the thirteen-year-old boy emperor was ‘capped’ – the ceremony to celebrate his majority – and, backed by a trusted eunuch Zheng Zhong, he turned on the Dous: the regent was eliminated, the empress retired and their pet historian Ban Gu, now sixty-one, arrested. Ban’s sister, who knew the young emperor, appealed, but Gu was executed. History writing again proved a perilous pursuit. Emperor He rewarded eunuch Zheng with the titles of marquess and director of the royal palace, the first eunuch to rise so high. One of the Dou’s trusted eunuchs, Cai Lun, keeper of tools and weapons, survived the downfall of the regent to continue his development of a new material on which to write. The court wrote on heavy bamboo and expensive silk, but now, after watching how paper wasps mixed tree bark with saliva, Cai invented paper, for which the emperor promoted him. But Ban Gu was dead: who would finish the Book of Han?