Confucius' petty state of Lu was founded by the Duke of Chou, brother of the founder posthumously called the Wu Wang, or the "Warrior King": for many generations those Dukes of Lu seem to have resided at or near the metropolis, and to have assisted the Emperors with their advice as counsellors on the spot, as well as to have visited at intervals and ruled their own distant state, which was separated from Sung by the River Sz and by the marsh or lakes through which that river ran. Yet Lu as a state had only the rank of a marquisate ruled by a marquess. Another close and influential relative of the founder or "Warrior King" was the Duke of Shao, who was infeoffed in Yen (the Peking plain), and whose descendants, like those of the Duke of Chou, seem to have done double duty at the metropolis and in their own feudal appanage. Confucius' history scarcely records anything of an international kind about Yen, which was a petty, feeble region, dovetailed in between Tsin and Ts'i, quite isolated, and occupied in civilizing some of the various Tartar and Corean barbarians; but it must have gradually increased in wealth and resources like all the other Chinese states; for, as we have seen in the last chapter, the Earls of Yen blossomed out into Kings at the beginning of the fourth century B.C., and the philosopher Mencius, when advising the King of Ts'i, even strongly recommended him to make war on the rising Yen power. The founder of Ts'i was the chief adviser of the Chou founder, but was not of his family name; his ancestors--also the ancestors later on claimed by certain Tartar rulers of China--go back to one of the ultra-mythical Emperors of China; his descendants bore, under the Chou dynasty, the dignity of marquess, and reigned without a break until, as already related, the T'ien or Ch'en family, emanating from the orthodox state of Ch'en, usurped the throne. Ts'i was always a powerful and highly civilized state; on one occasion, in 589 B.C., as mentioned in Chapter VI., its capital was desecrated by Tsin; and on another, a century later, the overbearing King of Wu invaded the country. After the title of king was taken in 378 B.C., the court of Ts'i became quite a fashionable centre, and the gay resort of literary men, scientists, and philosophers of all kinds, Taoists included.