Famous Phonies Read online

  Copyright © 2014 by Brianna DuMont

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Sky Pony Press, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

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  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Manufactured in China, July 2014

  This product conforms to CPSIA 2008

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  DuMont, Brianna.

  Famous phonies : legends, fakes, and frauds who changed history / Brianna DuMont.

  pages cm – (The changed history series)

  Summary: “”Famous Phonies: Legends, Fakes, and Frauds Who Changed History is the first in a new nonfiction middle grade series that will explore the underbelly of history, making you question everything you thought you knew about history’s finest. It’s perfect for the history buff, the reluctant reader, or that kid who loves the strange and unusual.””—Provided by publisher.

  Audience: Ages 9-12.

  ISBN 978-1-62914-645-4 (hardback)

  1. Impostors and imposture—Biography—Juvenile literature. 2. Deception—Juvenile literature. I. Title. II. Title: Legends, fakes, and phonies who changed history.

  CT9980.D87 2014

  920.02—dc23 2014022733

  Cover design by Brian Peterson

  Cover photo credit Wikimedia Commons Public Domain / Source: Clark Art Institute via Docu 2010

  Interior illustrations by Bethany Straker

  Book design by Sara Kitchen

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63220-207-9

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  Introduction

  Chapter 1 Confucius

  Chapter 2 George Washington

  Chapter 3 Pythagoras

  Chapter 4 Hiawatha

  Chapter 5 Gilgamesh

  Chapter 6 Major William Martin

  Chapter 7 William Shakespeare

  Chapter 8 Pope Joan

  Chapter 9 Homer

  Chapter 10 Prester John

  Chapter 11 Huangdi

  Chapter 12 The Turk

  Acknowledgments

  Notes on Sources

  Sources

  Image Credits

  Index

  Author’s Note

  This book isn’t about rewriting history. I don’t want to obliterate anybody’s beloved Bard. But this book is about expanding history. Let’s leave it to the scholars in their ivory towers to debate the finer points of oral transmission in Ancient Greece, or how many ruffled Elizabethan actors it took to write a bawdy joke. Their job is to argue all day. My job is to bring those arguments down from the tower and give a new side to an old face. Taking the stuffiness out of those debates is just a bonus, because I truly believe history is the greatest subject out there, and it deserves some loosening of the collars. All of the research is their work; I just read all their books and tried to stay as accurate as possible in a world built around contradictions. Apologies to all my historian friends if I glossed over one too many of their finer points in my quest to write a really great children’s book!

  “History would be a wonderful thing, if only it were true.” — Tolstoy

  enter at your own risk

  Introduction

  Caution: Extremely Controversial

  If you’re looking for witty sayings by Confucius or electrifying tales of George Washington’s brilliance, you’ve got the wrong book. Sure, those famous guys are in here, but it’d be dull as rocks to rehash stuff you’ve already learned. Besides, there’s something those other books didn’t tell you about these fabulously famous figures. They never existed.

  Ah, got your attention, did I?

  It’s not as easy as all that, of course. Your teachers aren’t out to scam you so don’t throw out your history books just yet. As usual, the truth isn’t black and white. Many of the figures in this book were real people. They lived and breathed, just like you and me. Only, they weren’t exactly the brilliant figures we learn about in school. Some were fake; some were phony; and some were just plain made up. The people who were once real have been crushed by their own legends long ago. Today, we actually think the legends are the real deal.

  They aren’t.

  This book isn’t trying to get rid of anybody’s beloved Bard or peace-loving cannibal, but it is trying to expand your knowledge about history. So if controversy makes your skin tingle and mysteries make your head ache, this may not be the book for you. It’s chock full of both. But if you want to know who really wrote Homer’s epics, or how Shakespeare could possibly be a big, fat phony, then dive in and enjoy another side of history’s movers and shakers.

  Chapter

  1

  Confucius

  Man of Many Sayings

  Lived: Sixth century BCE, China

  Occupation: The Great Teacher

  Way More Popular than Bieber

  Today, Confucius would rule the Twitter-sphere with all his pithy sayings, just as he ruled ancient China’s word game. Instead of “Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself,” today, Confucius’s quips would be more like: B4 U EMBARK ON A JOURNEY OF REVNGE, DIG 2 GRAVZ. But hey, the message is still there.

  Confucius lived at the same time as other great thinkers, such as Thales in Miletus and Buddha in India. Maybe it was something in the water. In any case, the sixth century BCE churned out more great thinkers than Harvard has churned out presidents.

  After people in China realized the potential of the great stuff coming out of Confucius’s mouth, they started flocking to him. Some say that over three thousand disciples followed him around the country. Many scholars believe it was probably closer to seventy-two (although that’s even suspicious). Still, that’s an impressive number before things like Twitter and Facebook could help get the word out about the new guy in town.

  Confucius’s sayings were gathered together in a book called the Analects.

  The Analects: just don’t call them an autobiography.

  The Analects brims with useful aphorisms—short blurbs about the best ways to live, work, and learn. At least, that’s what the history books tell us. But in reality, most of these sayings weren’t written down until a century after Confucius lived. Not only that, but much of what we know about Confucius’s life was compiled decades, and even centuries, after his death.

  Who’s to say this guy wasn’t some old fraud?

  Well, if he was, it wasn’t his fault. After Confucius died in 479 BCE, his followers started “remembering” all the great things he did: Thought up hundreds of brilliant sayings; invented a new philosophy; stood over nine feet tall; slayed a fire-breathing dragon while wearing fuzzy, pink bunny slippers. Done, done, and done.

  Okay, maybe not that last one, but you can see how easily his reputation snowballed. Everyone wanted to turn this man into a legend. Maybe they just felt bad for ignoring him during his lifetime.

  It isn’t easy being awesome.

  Confucius Who?

  So, what’s the story behind the most influential man in Chinese history? With thousands of followers, or at least a few dozen, he was probably handsome and well-spoken, right? Not really. Histo
ry tells us that he was ugly and grotesquely tall, which sounds like a troll. Even his future biographers didn’t try to sugarcoat the truth about his appearance—but they also had no problem bending the facts to make Confucius seem better than he probably was.

  Take his birth, for instance. Legend says his birth was divine, an answer to a prayer his mother made every night before bed. If she had a son, Confucius’s father promised to marry her. Hence his name, Kong, which means “an utterance of thankfulness when prayers have been answered.”

  Kong:

  Confucius is the Westernized version of Kong Fuzi, which means Master Kong, and is only one of the many ways to say his name in Chinese.

  Lengthy in English, but it works in Chinese. Legend also says he was over nine feet tall. Sure, he was probably a giant for his time—around six feet—but that’s likely it. As for being ugly? His biographers say his head was so disfigured it could make kids cry. Okay, there’s no documentation of any kids actually crying when they saw him, but they might have.

  We do know that Confucius’s dad had at least two wives, which would be frowned upon today but was all good back then. However, neither one of those women was Confucius’s mother. Even though her prayers had been answered, Confucius’s dad still hadn’t married his mom, who was, in fact, a fifteen-year-old girl. It gets worse. A few years after Confucius’s birth, his dad died, and his wives kicked the girl and baby Confucius to the street without much more than a “don’t let the door smack you on your way out.”

  As a result, Confucius grew up poor and illegitimate. To get by, he did menial jobs like watching livestock. But he was smart—too smart for the other kids in his town. Even worse, they all knew it, too. While the other children played war games, Confucius hung out by himself or with other old souls, A.K.A. old men.

  Finally, a local duke noticed him. How could he not notice a six-foot-tall kid with a weird head? After he got over Confucius’s odd looks, the duke noticed something else—Confucius was sort of smart, unlike his peers. The duke put him in charge of some granaries, which was actually a pretty impressive gig since grain was used as money in sixth-century BCE China. What wasn’t so impressive was having to count out tiny beads of grain all day. What Confucius really wanted—and what he spent his whole life trying to get—was a government position.

  Confucius eventually settled down, married, and had some kids, all while wishing he could get into politics. He had this grand idea for China that he wanted to see come to life. Confucius lived during the Spring and Autumn Period—a precursor to the Warring States Period, whose name pretty much sums up the time—and for most of his life, the country was embroiled in chaos between the various warring lords.

  Confucius wanted a peaceful, stable, and fair China. So he did the noble thing. He abandoned his wife and children and set out to teach people to honor their ancestors and to live humbly and righteously.

  Confucius and his followers—all four of them (Japan).

  World Peace through World Domination

  For the rest of his life, Confucius traveled the country looking for rulers to promote him to a government position. Unfortunately, very few of them listened to him, probably because Confucius always shot himself in the foot by saying stupid things. Instead of the benign, jolly sage that legend teaches us about, the actual Confucius didn’t seem to understand people at all. When he met a new ruler, his first question would be: “Can I be your master?” Most princes and dukes threw him out right then and there.

  But that didn’t discourage Confucius from asking more leaders to follow him. He even found a few who would listen and let him teach them, but then he messed up those opportunities, too. As soon as he got a prince’s or duke’s ear, he had a bad tendency to say things like, “An oppressive government is worse than a man-eating tiger.” And man-eating tigers were no joke in his day. His new students usually exiled him after that.

  So Confucius roamed all over China, collecting followers but no royal students. He didn’t take rejection well, either. When asked to comment on men higher up in the government food chain, he replied, “Pah! These puny creatures aren’t even worth mentioning.”

  It takes one to know one.

  Luckily for Confucius, the lords refrained from removing his head, but they also didn’t give his misshapen head a job. So when he wasn’t insulting dukes, he enjoyed hitting poor people with his cane and telling them to just die already. Maybe it made him feel better. His disciples, who were supposed to convert others to Confucius’s way of thinking, weren’t exempt from his anger, either. After his disciple Ran Qiu failed to convince his own ruler to act more ethically, Confucius got harsh with Ran Qiu. “He is my disciple no more,” he supposedly said. “Beat the drum, my little ones, and attack him: you have my permission.” Which almost sounds like the Wicked Witch of the West ordering her flying monkeys to attack the unsuspecting Dorothy and her friends.

  governor:

  Much debated. Maybe he did hold public office as the Minister of Crime, saw how ineffective it was, and developed the idea of ruling with virtue to set an example for everyone to follow.

  As a result of his nasty personality, the actual Confucius had very little influence over others during his lifetime. But that just wouldn’t do for his followers, so they decided to jazz things up after Confucius’s death. His followers claimed that he was a governor and that crime virtually disappeared during his tenure. Being a governor would’ve been the perfect gig for Confucius to prove the truth of his ideas. Although, it probably never happened.

  Sure, he was bitter. It’d be hard not to be after spending your whole life trying to teach people the best way to live while they refused to be taught. But he tried to make the best of a bad situation. He insisted to others “not to be upset when one’s merits are ignored: is this not the mark of a wise man?”

  Confucius died at the age of seventy-two (there’s that suspicious number again), and even on his death bed, he was still asking people if they would let him rule over them. He knew China would never be peaceful and stable with blockheads in charge, and in his opinion, they were all blockheads. He considered his life a total failure. It’d just be one more kick in the pants if he’d known that by the fourth century BCE people thought he should have been king.

  His followers knew it, though, and they kept traveling and writing, trying to spread the word about Confucius. That’s when the embellishments to his life story started. It was as if they were trying to use a Bedazzler on Confucius to make him way cooler (and sparklier) than he was. They also glossed over the nasty bits about him, which helped him rise in esteem throughout the country. There are three different versions of Confucius, and you can take your pick: the humble sage, the politically motivated sage, or the warrior sage, but each one was constructed centuries after his death.

  But just when Confucianism began to take root, the Qin dynasty took control of China. The leader ordered all books on Confucius burned. He also ordered that Confucius’s followers be burned, too.

  It turned out okay, though. The Qin’s were soon overthrown, since, well, they were kind of brutal, and the Han dynasty took their place. The Hans happened to be big fans of Confucius and put all of his principles into the government. They even made Confucianism the main philosophy of China.

  The Han set the stage for how all subsequent dynasties would rule. Turns out, Confucius had the last laugh after all.

  junzi:

  A superior person; an individual who is morally noble and an example to others, typically a male. Sorry, ladies. Women usually got the short stick when it came to equality in the sixth century BCE.

  Study Confucius, Live Long Life

  So what were Confucius’s principles? Mostly, he taught how to live as a junzi in order to create a good and peaceful China. If people (including rulers) lived virtuously, then their subjects would follow their example—so the thinking goes.

  If Confucius saw all the temples and statues to him today, he’d probably faint. Or whack people w
ith his cane. Either way, he’d be excited.

  And no, the principles are not just punch lines used in bad Chinese parodies starting with “Confucius says . . .”.

  In order to rule, emperors had to have the Mandate of Heaven. Tian gave emperors their authority to rule, meaning their power and legitimacy came directly from above—unless they didn’t follow Confucius’s principles or behave like the early sage emperors (like Huangdi!—see chapter 11).

  Then, Tian took the Mandate away, and the emperor could then be justifiably overthrown. It was exactly what Confucius always wanted in life: emperors following everything he said, exactly as he said it. He would’ve been so excited.

  Tian:

  Heaven.

  Some of the ideas of Confucianism were rather progressive, like how positions should be given based on merit and not birth. Others weren’t as forward thinking. For example, women didn’t really matter until they became someone’s wife, and then, Confucius tells them to obey their husbands and to walk on the opposite side of the street from men. Unfortunately for many Chinese women, this type of thinking defined their role in the world for hundreds of years to come.

  At the heart of Confucianism are five core values—Rén, Li, Yi, Zhi, and Xin—and these dictated the way the Chinese ruled for centuries. They’re that important. Confucianism is a very complicated system involving loyalty, kindness, and respect. But at the core of Confucianism lie Rén and Li.

  Like a nineteenth-century Victorian gentleman, Rén is about propriety—always the right behavior in the right situation, especially when it comes to interacting with other people. Rén is sometimes translated as “benevolence,” because it requires trying to see things from another person’s point-of-view and then doing what’s best for them. Picture Confucius beating poor people who never contributed to society—they needed to know their place; that’s what was best for them. In all seriousness, though, Rén is the recognition that we need to be kind to others because we all live in a community and are connected to those around us by important relationships.