Tacitus Trap

The theory was brought up in a 2007 book by Professor Pan Zhichang from the School of Journalism and Communication at Nanjing University.

[3][4][5] Tacitus is a Roman politician and historian famous for his book Histories, where he also included his moral judgements over historical events he experienced in person.

[6] In 69 AD, when Nero fled Rome amid a revolution against him, the civil and military authorities disconnected from him elected Galba, the then governor of Hispania Tarraconensis who supported and led the revolt, as the new emperor, which was challenged by Clodius Macer and Fonteius Capito, two loyal generals of Nero, who cut off the food supply to Rome.

"[7] In the 2007 book Who Robbed Our Aestheticism, the author Pan Zhichang, a Chinese aesthetician from the School of Journalism and Communication at Nanjing University, analyses the etiology of historical political chaos during 220–280 AD, which inspired the stories in the Chinese classic Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

[8][9]: 24–25 Chinese writer Chen Xubin quotes Zigong in The Analects, "Zhou's wickedness was not so great as that name implies.