The Sanguo Yanyi - Chapter 3
Wednesday, September 2, 2009 at 7:17PM The Sanguo Yanyi - Chapter 3:
In Wenming Garden, Dong Zhuo Denounces Ding Yuan;
With Red Hare, Li Su Bribes Lu Bu.
Listen:
WARNING: THE FOLLOWING COMMENTARY MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS!
In this, the third installment of the Three Kingdoms saga, the true twilight of the once-mighty Han Dynasty begins. In the past four hundred years, the Han has conquered perhaps the greatest Chinese land empire in antiquity, an empire stretching from Manchuria in the north, to the Gobi Desert in the northwest, all the way down to northern Vietnam in the south. Great generals and even greater scholars made the Han a Dynasty whose influence would last centuries upon centuries beyond its own considerably long lifespan. In comparison to the great empire of the West, Rome: The Han lasted 400 years, the Western Roman Empire lasted about 476 years or so, before being finally overrun by "barbarian" tribes. However, while the last TRUE enclave of "Roman" civilization, Byzantium, fell in 1453, (and it is debatable that Byzantium was even a "Roman" Empire after the end of the reign of Justinian in the 700's, since it had indeed become very much a Greek empire), I have it on very good authority that many of the people of China even today still refer to themselves as "The People of Han", some 1800 years after the fall of the Han.
