三代魔咒·死非其罪·阿意兴功——论《史记·蒙恬列传》

Curse,Death and Feat—— A Commentary on Biography of Meng Tian in Historical Records

司马迁在《史记·蒙恬列传》中展现了高超的史传艺术:一是蒙氏是秦代非常显耀的家族,蒙恬、蒙毅兄弟二人更是得到秦始皇生前的重用恩宠,但他们却死于胡亥、赵高、李斯之手,没有逃脱为将不过三代的历史魔咒;二是蒙毅、蒙恬被杀之前,反复辩解自己"无罪""无辜""无过",死非其罪,何罪于天,他们的辩白是《蒙恬列传》的着力处,耐人寻味;三是司马迁在《蒙恬列传》中仅扼要叙述蒙恬的功绩,于文中点出其阿意兴功的罪过,并通过"以客形主"的手法,对蒙毅、赵高、秦始皇、秦子婴进行或详或略的描写。

SIMA Qian displayed a superb level of biographical artistic characteristics in his Biography of MENG Tian in Historical Records. Firstly, The Mengs were an extremely illustrious family during the Qin Dynasty. Of especial note, both brothers, MENG Tian(蒙恬) and MENG Yi (蒙毅), had received the favor of and were appointed to important positions by QIN Shihuang during his lifetime. In the end,they died at the hands of them,such as ZHAO Gao(赵高),HU Hai(胡亥) and LI Si (李斯).nor the historical curse that no families would hold to the high political position for three generations. Secondly, before they were killed, both MENG Yi and Meng Tian had repeatedly proclaimed that they were "not guilty","innocent" and had done "no wrongs". They had also proclaimed that they had died not because of their crimes and that they had not committed any crimes. Their vehement defending of their innocence was the main focus of the Biography of MENG Tian. This is intriguing. Thirdly, SIMA Qian had only briefly described the achievements of MENG Tian in his Biography of MENG Tian while pointing out his crime of "blindly following the instructions of the Emperor while focusing on achieving merits for himself". Additionally, it is noteworthy that through the usage of the method of "using guests to describe the host", SIMA Qian had either detailedly or briefly narrated on MENG Yi, ZHAO Gao, QIN Ziying(秦子婴) and QIN Shihuang.