Ubisoft’s Assassin Creed series is known for its historical tie-ins and extensive research, but how much of their story is fact and how much fiction? The reboot of the series follows modern day Assassin Layla Hassan as she explores the beginning of the assassins in Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Viking inhabited England through the Animus. The second game in the series, Odyssey, takes place during the Peloponnesian War, the war between Sparta and Athens.
Our protagonist of Odyssey is Kassandra or Alexios, depending on who you choose to play as, a descendant of the Spartan king Leonidas I. They are exiled for ruining the sacrifice of their sibling when they are just a small child. As an adult and misthios, a sort of mercenary, they are paid to intervene unknowingly in the Peloponnesian War as well as getting involved into the cult of Kosmos. While many characters you meet and events that occur in Odyssey are based in reality, there are several that make this a work of fiction.
The game begins in Thermopylae with Spartan king Leonidas and his band of 300 to face off against the Persian invasion led by their king Xerxes. These are based on historical people and events. In Herodotus’ The Histories, yes the same Herodotus that bums a ride on your boat, he tells the story of Persian wars against Greece and about the sacrifice of Leonidas and his men. This story has been retold in Enemy at the Gates which inspired the graphic novel and eventual movie 300. Several hundred Greek and Spartan men stood against an army of an estimated 300,000 to allow enough time for Athens to evacuate and other armies to gather to fight the Persians.
Many of the people you meet in Athens are based on real people. The player begins as Kassandra or Alexios in 431 BCE, the first year of the Peloponessian war, although by the time you leave your island to go to Greece’s mainland Sparta and Athens are already engaging in battles. Most of our information about the real Peloponnesian War comes from the book written by Athenian general Thucydides who fought against the Spartans and possibly Brasidas, the Spartan commander who aides our protagonist and was a real person. He was exiled during the war and although he survives the war, he does not actually finish his book.
Thucydides tells the story of how other city states approached Sparta for their help against Athens, in which Sparta at first declined but were brought in to support their allies. Athens broke the treaty first but Spartan backed Thebes started the first physical transgression and the city states of Greece chose their sides. The book itself is full of some great speeches including the infamous Pericles’ Funeral Oration. There is also a small section about the plague which is also within the game. Pericles did die during the plague but his wife, sometimes referred to as a concubine, Aspasia and their child survive. Thucydides is not in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, although he was probably in Athens during the plague.
Leonidas did have a son, Pleistarchus, but that son is believed to have died childless shortly after he became king. This means that Myrrine, mother to Kassandra and Alexios, and daughter of Leonidas is not a real person. Kassandra’s/Alexios’ father, who may give you flashbacks to your high school math class, died 64 years before the Peloponnesian War. There is also no historical record for a Spartan general named Nikolas or Wolf of Sparta or his adopted son Stentor. Oddly enough a person named Stentor is in a Greek myth where he was a herald for the Greeks in the Trojan War.
In the game, many deaths and the unveiling of the cult of the Kosmos ends the war between Athens and Sparta but in reality Sparta is not the champion the game makes them out to be. Athens was winning the war but then tried to also take over Sicily which would spread them too thin and eventually be their downfall. The Cult of Kosmos is not real, at least not that we know of; however, the leader of the cult is based on a real person. Many secret societies existed in ancient Greece including one not so secret known as Pythagoreanism based on the philosophy of Pythagoras.
Most of the events and people of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey being based in reality makes the fictitious parts that much more believable. While an ancient race of demigods, the Isu, influencing our past with a glowing pyramid may not be believable, a mercenary influencing both sides of a civil war is. All good lies have an element of truth and all good fiction is based in reality.
Leave a reply!