Note to moderator: Please read the answerline carefully. A man with this profession wrote that a man’s death can be “as weighty as Mount Tai” or “as light as a goose feather” in a letter to his friend Ren An. That man with this profession was arrested for a “grand insult” after being the only person to defend a general who surrendered to the Xiongnu. A work by a man with this profession ends with 69 “Ranked” sections that put diviners and usurers on the bottom. After the Li Ling affair, a man with this profession chose (*) castration over execution to finish the Shiji, a large work started by his father. That work by a man with this profession relates stories of 100 rivers of mercury at a tomb, and covers the period between the Yellow Emperor to Emperor Wu. For 10 points, Sima Qian (“see-mah chen”) wrote a work titled Records of the Grand what profession? ■END■
ANSWER: historians [accept biographers; accept Records of the Grand Historian or Tàishǐgōng shū; prompt on government officials or imperial court officials with “What was their most famous job there?”; prompt on scribes or archivists or astronomers or astrologers or calendarists or Zhōngshūlǐng with “What other profession are they most famous for?”; prompt on authors or equivalents; prompt on scholars or officials or eunuchs]
<KP, World History>
= Average correct buzz position