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How are court positions awarded in Lilliput?

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Illustration of Lemuel Gulliver lying on the ground, tied down by tiny Lilliputians, with crowds and small buildings in the background, from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. — Gulliver’s Travels Lemuel Gulliver in Lilliput, illustration from an edition of Jonathan Swift's *Gulliver's Travels*.

In the land of Lilliput, as depicted in Jonathan Swift’s novel Gulliver’s Travels, court positions are awarded to individuals who demonstrate the greatest skill at rope dancing.1

This absurd requirement is one of many ridiculous customs used by Swift to satirize the petty nature of political life and the arbitrary ways in which power and influence were distributed in the English court of his time.1