The History of the Former Han Dynasty

…to have begun the famous Han shu (“Book of Han”), considered the Confucian historiographic model on which all later dynastic histories were patterned.

…compiling and editing the vast Han shu, which became the prototype for the official histories of successive ruling houses in China, recording the administrations of their predecessors. Although modeled on the Shiji, the Han shu was not merely a supplement to that long-range work but was a new and comprehensive…

The resulting Han shu (“Book of Han”) is one of the best-known histories ever written and the model for all future dynastic histories in China.

…tradition with the Hanshu (History of the Former Han Dynasty), by Sima Qian’s successor and imitator, Pan Gu (32–92 ce). Toward the end of the 1st century ce, in the Mediterranean world, Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, which are contrasting pairs of biographies, one Greek and…

Ban Gu, author of the Hanshu (“Han Documents”), a history of the Former Han dynasty containing more than 800,000 words, performed a similar tour de force but did not equal Sima Qian in either scope or style.