Li was not a friend, but Sima respected him as a loyal servant and defended him. However, he was alone in doing so. A man swift to anger, Emperor Wu was enraged at Sima’s boldness in speaking out and sentenced him to death. The sentence could only be commuted by an enormous sum of money, or by castration, faced with which any gentleman would ask to be ‘permitted to commit suicide’. Sima, though, had sworn an inviolable oath to his father that he would finish his great work of history. So, in filial piety, he ‘submitted to the knife’ in the hothouse warmth of the ‘Silkworm Chamber’.
