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Fan Ye
Liu Song historian who wrote the annals and biographies of the History of the Later Han and was executed in 445 for a plot to enthrone Liu Yikang
In an archive hall, tall wooden shelves hold scrolls and bound books with small tags, and one person climbs a ladder with their back turned; a long table in front holds an unrolled river map, a bronze lamp and a copper jug, with a city wall seen through the window.
Also known as Zi Weizong
- Roles
- Historian
Fan Ye, courtesy name Weizong, was the youngest son of the general Fan Tai and came from Shunyang, in present-day Henan. He served on the staff of Liu Yikang, Prince of Pengcheng, and as a director in the Ministry of Personnel. In 432 he drank and listened to dirges on the night before the burial of the prince's mother, and was demoted to governor of Xuancheng. According to his biography in the *Book of Song* (*Songshu*), he spent that period of disfavor condensing the many earlier accounts of the Eastern Han into one work, the *History of the Later Han* (*Hou Hanshu*), with ten annals and eighty biographies; the planned treatises were never finished. He later rose to general of the Left Guard, but in 445 he was executed for joining Kong Xixian's plot to put Liu Yikang on the throne. In the Northern Song his book was printed with the eight treatises of Sima Biao, and it is counted among the Four Early Histories.
Life and times
Dates 398 CE–445 CE