Abstract:
SIMA Qian displayed a superb level of biographical artistic characteristics in his Biography of MENG Tian in Historical Records. Firstly, The Mengs were an extremely illustrious family during the Qin Dynasty. Of especial note, both brothers, MENG Tian(蒙恬) and MENG Yi (蒙毅), had received the favor of and were appointed to important positions by QIN Shihuang during his lifetime. In the end,they died at the hands of them,such as ZHAO Gao(赵高),HU Hai(胡亥) and LI Si (李斯).nor the historical curse that no families would hold to the high political position for three generations. Secondly, before they were killed, both MENG Yi and Meng Tian had repeatedly proclaimed that they were "not guilty", "innocent" and had done "no wrongs". They had also proclaimed that they had died not because of their crimes and that they had not committed any crimes. Their vehement defending of their innocence was the main focus of the Biography of MENG Tian. This is intriguing. Thirdly, SIMA Qian had only briefly described the achievements of MENG Tian in his Biography of MENG Tian while pointing out his crime of "blindly following the instructions of the Emperor while focusing on achieving merits for himself". Additionally, it is noteworthy that through the usage of the method of "using guests to describe the host", SIMA Qian had either detailedly or briefly narrated on MENG Yi, ZHAO Gao, QIN Ziying(秦子婴) and QIN Shihuang.