Twice ToldLienü zhuan, juan 4: The Wife of Qi Liang of Qi
- Language
- Chinese
- Reading
- transcribed from the page image
- Translation
- ours
- Retrieved
- 17 October 2026
The Lienü zhuan (列女傳, “Biographies of Exemplary Women”) is credited to Liu Xiang. The scan reproduces a Ming print from the Guan gu tang collection of the Ye family of Changsha, as the Commons file description reads it. The print carries no punctuation; the punctuation below is ours. The entry ends with a hymn (頌) in four-character lines, which the print sets in two short columns.
齊杞梁殖之妻也。莊公襲莒，殖戰而死。莊公歸，遇其妻，使使者弔之于路。杞梁妻曰：「今殖有罪，君何辱命焉。若令殖免于罪，則賤妾有先人之弊廬在下，妾不得與郊弔。」于是莊公乃還車詣其室，成禮然後去。杞梁之妻無子，內外皆無五屬之親。既無所歸，乃枕其夫之屍于城下而哭，內誠動人，道路過者莫不為之揮佛[涕?]，十日而城為之崩。既葬，曰：「吾何歸矣？夫婦人必有所倚者也。父在則倚父，夫在則倚夫，子在則倚子。今吾上則無父，中則無夫，下則無子。內無所依，以見吾誠。外無所倚，以立吾節。吾豈能更二哉，亦死而已。」遂赴淄水而死。君子謂杞梁之妻貞而知禮。詩云：「我心傷悲，聊與子同歸。」此之謂也。 頌曰： 杞梁戰死，其妻收喪，齊莊道弔，避不敢當，哭夫于城，城為之崩，自以無親，赴淄而薨。
Translation
She was the wife of Qi Liang Zhi of Qi. Duke Zhuang raided Ju, and Zhi fought and died. When the duke came home he met Zhi’s wife and sent a messenger to offer condolences on the road. Qi Liang’s wife said, “If Zhi has done wrong, why should my lord trouble himself to send condolences? If Zhi is free from blame, then I, a lowly wife, still have my forebears’ poor house, and I cannot take condolences out here in the country.” So Duke Zhuang turned his carriage around, went to her house, completed the rites and left.
Qi Liang’s wife had no son, and no relatives of the five degrees of mourning, inside the family or outside it. She had nowhere to go. She rested her head on her husband’s body at the foot of the wall and wept. Her sincerity moved people, and none of the passers-by on the road failed to wipe away their [tears?], and after ten days the wall collapsed on her account. After the burial she said, “Where am I to go? A woman must have someone to lean on. While her father lives she leans on her father, while her husband lives on her husband, while her son lives on her son. Now above me I have no father, in the middle no husband, below me no son. Within the house I have nothing to lean on to show my sincerity, outside it nothing to lean on to keep my honour. How could I marry a second time? All I can do is die.” Then she threw herself into the Zi River and died.
The gentleman says that Qi Liang’s wife was chaste and understood ritual. The Odes say, “My heart is wounded with grief; for now, let me go back with you.” This is what that means.
The hymn: Qi Liang died in battle, and his wife gathered his remains for burial. Duke Zhuang of Qi offered condolences on the road; she turned them aside and did not dare accept. She wept for her husband at the wall, and the wall collapsed because of it. Seeing herself without kin, she threw herself into the Zi and died.
Notes
- The speech to the duke is almost word for word the speech in the Zuozhuan (Duke Xiang 23); the wall and the suicide are new here. The Zuozhuan has the duke offer condolences at her house; here he does so after she refuses the road.
- 在下: the print reads 先人之弊廬在下，妾不得與郊弔. We read 在 as “is there” and 下 as belonging to the next clause, the lowly wife of the Zuozhuan’s 下妾; 在下 as “below” is also possible. The sense of the refusal is the same either way. Idema’s translation has “the humble abode of his father is still standing.”
- 揮佛: the print reads 佛 where the sense and the Wikisource text call for 涕, “tears”. We take it as a misprint, so the translation keeps the word in brackets with a question mark.
- 枕其夫之屍: the print has 枕, “rested her head on”. The text quoted in the Yuefu shiji (documents/yuefu-shiji-guanxiu-qi-liang-qi.md) has 就, “went to”.
- 城 is a city wall or a walled town. The text does not say whose city; Idema marks it “the wall (of Ju?)”. It is not the Great Wall.
- 無五屬之親: relatives within the five degrees of mourning dress.
- 內誠動人: “her inner sincerity moved people”.