It’s an aetiological story, meant to explain why the Argives wear their hair short, while the Spartans wear theirs long. I’ve written about the Battle of the Champions before. 12).īecause they’re worth it! Following their victory over the Argives in the Battle of the Champions, the Spartans adopted the distinctive custom of growing their hair long. It could occur on a private and a public level” (p. As Louis Rawlings puts it in his The Ancient Greeks at War (2007): “ Ophelia (‘profit’, ‘gain’, ‘advantage’) was a commonly stated motivation for aggression. The ancient Greek historian Thucydides already pointed out that no one would wage war if they didn’t think they’d gain from it (4.59). Hans van Wees, Greek Warfare: Myths and Realities (2004), pp. It was customary to sack towns, raid enemy temples, and to sell a defeated population into slavery (see e.g. War was a profitable endeavour, especially for those at the top, since they were the first in line when it came to dividing the spoils of war. While this did provide an income for the poorest members of society, they weren’t exactly paid top drachma. The poorest members of society, who couldn’t even afford the basic panoply, could instead be hired to work, for example, as oarsmen, as many of the landless poor – the so-called thetes – were in Classical Athens. 700-500 BC), when what we now rather anachronistically refer to as “ hoplites” seem to have worn a considerable amount of bronze armour, this would have been very expensive indeed.īut by the time of the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC), the game’s setting, hoplite equipment had been largely reduced to an often simple conical helmet, a shield, and a spear. Especially during the Archaic period (ca. It’s true that in ancient Greece, most warriors were expected to provide their own equipment. It is, after all, the wealthy and powerful who ultimately decide to go to war, not the poor and the downtrodden. If this were true, at any point in history, wars would never be fought. In ancient Greece, war provided an income for the poor, but was an expense for the rich. I think it’s a useful way to learn a bit about aspects of ancient Greece that are perhaps less well known. I’ll go through each of them in turn, add some further information if necessary, and whether or not the creators of the game got their facts straight. I think I’ve managed to collect all the hints in the game that are historical (or meant to be historical). Some of these are correct, but others are, if not always wrong, certainly incomplete. Other hints consist of historical factoids. Some of these hints involve the game itself (tips about certain controls or features, for example). When you start the game or load a previously saved game in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, you’ll see a loading screen, which displays various hints. This article was originally published on the defunct Ancient World Magazine website and is now re-published here.
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