Chen Shou

The old chronicles say

Chen Shou copied Tiet Tong’s memorial in full into the Tam quoc chi, so that a text on assimilation written by a man who was part of it survives. His history is also the one written closest to the year 248: the rising in Giao Chi and Cuu Chan that year sits in a short biography appended to that of Luc Khai, for his younger brother Luc Dan, and there is no woman’s name in it at all.¹²

His biography of Si Nhiep opens with origins: the Si family’s ancestors fled the disorders of Wang Mang south to Giao Chau, and six generations later came Si Nhiep’s father. He describes the power of one family holding four commanderies in a passage often quoted, ending with the line that even Uy Da could not surpass them — a line Emperor Tu Duc in the nineteenth century would call going much too far. He also quotes a letter from Yuan Hui to Xun Yu praising Si Nhiep for keeping a commandery intact amid great disorder. Lu Dai’s killing of Si Huy and his brothers he tells two ways in two books, the biographies of Si Nhiep and of Lu Dai: the same writer, two ways to die.⁴⁵⁶

In his verdict at the end of the book, he writes that Si Nhiep held the land of Nam Viet and lived at ease all his life, but in his son’s generation carelessness brought disaster down on them, and closes with a sentence that is not easy to hear: this is what comes of a man of ordinary talent who covets wealth and rank and relies on rugged terrain.³