• 曹操 Tsʽao Tsʽao or 曹公 Tsʽao Kung , afterwards known as 魏武帝 Wei Wu Ti ( AD 155⁠–⁠220). There is hardly any room for doubt that the earliest commentary on Sun Tzǔ actually came from the pen of this extraordinary man, whose biography in the San Kuo Chih 94 reads like a romance. One of the greatest military geniuses that the world has seen, and Napoleonic in the scale of his operations, he was especially famed for the marvelous rapidity of his marches, which has found expression in the line 說曹操曹操就到 “Talk of Tsʽao Tsʽao , and Tsʽao Tsʽao will appear.” Ou-yang Hsiu says of him that he was a great captain who “measured his strength against Tung Cho , Lü Pu and the two Yüan , father and son, and vanquished them all; whereupon he divided the Empire of Han with Wu and Shu , and made himself king.