【boy actors, female roles, and elizabethan eroticism】

Assassin's Creedis the premiere game series for history nerds who are boy actors, female roles, and elizabethan eroticismalso fine with facts meaning nothing.

Previous AC games have included Leonardo Da Vinci, George Washington, the Marquis de Sade, Blackbeard, Alexander Graham Bell, and Cleopatra as characters in their plots, to absolutely delightful results. Now that the exact time period of Assassin's Creed: Odysseyhas been revealed (give it up for 421 BCE!), it's time to speculate on which historical figures might interact with the player character.

SEE ALSO: 'Assassin's Creed Odyssey' confirmed by Ubisoft after leak

There were a lot of weirdos in the classical era, so buckle up.

Darius

Darius is only a historical figure in the Assassin’s Creeduniverse, but it’s still likely that he’ll show up. He was mentioned in Assassin’s Creed II via his statue in Ezio Auditore’s Monteriggioni sanctuary, where a plaque mentioned that he was an assassin who killed King Xerxes I in 465 in the first recorded use of the Hidden Blade.

Darius’s legendary blade reappeared in Assassin’s Creed: Origins, when Aya gives it to Bayek after receiving it from Cleopatra. It’s Darius’s blade that chops off Bayek’s finger, which started the Assassins’ finger-chopping tradition that ended when Altaïr modified it to unsheathe less violently.

Right now Darius is the only connection to the actual Assassins Odysseycan feasibly offer, considering the game takes place 380-plus years before Bayek and Aya found the Hidden Ones. Still, the question of how an Assassin could exist in this time is kind of a plot hole. Or is it? Ugh, who knows.

Herodotus

Including Herodotus, the Greek writer known as the “Father of History” in an Assassin’s Creedgame is practically a given. This walking easter egg wrote The Histories,which consolidated on paper the various oral traditions of his time and is considered the world’s first history book. Of course, a lot of what he wrote was heavily embellished by legends (unless there really was a poet who was kidnapped by pirates but escaped on a dolphin), but that just makes him more fun! Maybe Odysseywill prove or disprove some of his wackier accounts of historical events and he’ll serve a similar role to Charles Dickens in Syndicate, who was inspired by the player’s adventures to write some of his stories.

Sophocles

Sophocles was one of the premiere playwrights of the classical period. His works include Oedipus Rexand Antigone. Assassin’s Creed: Odysseytakes place a few years after Oedipus Rexpremiered, and since it’s Sophocles’s most famous work, there will probably be some reference to it in the game.

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Assassin’s Creedabsolutely loves putting theater in their games — remember Ezio crashing a play at the Colosseum in Brotherhood, or Connor coming for Haytham in a theater in III, or the ending of Black Flagwhich was in the same theater as III, or Arno owning a Cafe Theater in Unity, or Jacob being invited to a murder musical in Syndicate, or Bayek helping Phanos put on a play in Origins —so yeah. Expect Greek theater stuff.

Other playwrights who might appear are Euripides, who wrote Medea, and Aeschylus, who wrote the Oresteia, the only complete trilogy of Greek theater that survived to the modern era. Bonus points if someone makes a joke about “everything being a trilogy these days” and blames Aeschylus.

Pericles

Pericles was an Athenian statesman who is pretty much the poster child for the classical age of Athens. He built the Parthenon, supported some of the era’s most famous works of theater, was bonkers-level hype about democracy, had tons of political influence, was an effective general and a famously great public speaker... yeah, he pretty much did it all.

Assassin’s Creed: Odysseytakes place a few years before his death in 429 and it would be absolute lunacy to set a game in the classical era without including him.

Aspasia

More important than Pericles IMO is Aspasia, also known as the coolest woman in classical Greece. She was a hetaira, which was a class of fancy courtesans who were chosen for their beauty and educated to a level most Athenian women were discouraged from achieving, making them ideal companions for the city’s elite men.

Aspasia was famous in Athens for being a strong orator and great philosopher, and she turned her house into a party den for some of history’s greatest thinkers. Aspasia had a relationship with Pericles for most of his public life and some scholars speculate that she actually wrote some of his most famous speeches, making her the ghostwriter of Athenian democracy. Now that’sa title.

Side note: Including Aspasia as a main character in Odysseywould be a nice next step for the Assassin’s Creed franchise, which used courtesans as walking furniture as recently as Unity. Put some respect on the profession.

The Oracle of Delphi

The Oracle of Delphi, also called the Pythia, was the name for the high priestess of the temple of Apollo at Delphi. The Oracle was a hugedeal in classical Greece, and her predictions were taken seriously by kings and peasants alike.

Interestingly, Assassin’s Creed: Originsfeatured a different oracle of Apollo whose predictions came true in the “Halo of the Huntress” quest. (Also, if Bayek returns to the Oracle after the quest is finished, she gives more cryptic predictions that accurately predict game events like Cleopatra siding with Caesar and Bayek’s breakup with Aya.)

It’s possible the Oracle of Delphi will pop up in Odyssey and serve a similar purpose, or perhaps her gift of prophecy will be connected to the Isu race and provide context for the overarching Assassin’s Creedmythos.

Baby Plato

OK, Plato was born in the 420s, but I for one think it would be very funnyif the timeline of the game overlapped with his birth and there was just the tiniest cameo of Plato, one of the greatest philosophers of all time, as a silly little baby. Please, Ubisoft. If it’s not in the game, put baby Plato in some DLC. Do it for me.

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