 This pretext and the Marble Barge are famously linked with Empress Dowager Cixi.This architectural folly, known today as the Marble Boat ("Shifang"), is "moored" on Lake Kunming in what the empress renamed the "Garden for Cultivating Harmony" ("Yiheyuan").Another example of pretext was demonstrated in the speeches of the Roman orator Cato the Elder (234–149 BC).