Translate alea jacta est from Latin to French - MyMemory

I started this series with UNITY, then went to AC1, AC2, Brotherhood, Revelations, AC3, Rogue. Black Flag. Syndicate. Now we're all caught up with Origins. The tenth major release of Assassin's Creed, and released in 2017, the ten year anniversary of the franchise. As a game, ORIGINS presents a lot of challenges. One is this game is set in the Antiquity, the first AC game to go way back to the Pre-Crusades era. Then there is the size of ORIGINS, which is incredibly big, a recreation of a big swathe of Cleopatra' Egypt. There is also the volume of game content here on offer which is extensive and daunting. Ubisoft released the excellent Discovery Tour which substitutes for their database and maps out events and stuff on to terrain in an unique way. The game consulted a lot of Egyptologists for its recreation of the pyramids and managed to get ahead of a real-life archaeological discovery based on the theories of one of their consultants. The game has a huge number of side-quests and missions but most of them are errands of one kind or another, grounded however with a thematic unity with the main game's story. This makes them consistent and feel substantial but also repetitive and there's rarely an exploration of the world in a larger scope. As such I am mainly going to talk about the main campaign from beginning to end, while discussing side missions only in part.
Setting: Ptolemaic Egypt in the reign of Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator overlapping with the final leg of Caesar's Civil War and his dictatorship.
MAIN CAMPAIGN
Bayek is a Medjay, an ancient office in the Pharaonic age. Bayek blames the Ptolemies for the end of the Medjay but in fact it collapsed before Egypt's first foreign occupation by the Persians, who preceded Alexander. As such, Bayek's story has more fiction than history but we still have historical figures among the Proto-Templars, Lucius Septimus, the real-life Gabiniani Roman who killed Pompey Magnus, and Pothinus, the Royal Eunuch who was main henchman and minder of Ptolemy XIII. Among the Proto-Assassins, we have Pasherienptah III, an obscure priest of Memphis who is fictionalized here, and of course we have Marcus Junius Brutus, and Cassius among Aya's Roman recruits who show up at the end of the game. Other historical figures we see are: Ptolemy XIII, Cleopatra VII, Julius Caesar, Pompey Magnus, Apollodorous the Sicilian, Marcus Vitruvius.
The main story of Origins is entirely about Bayek's religious quest to ensure that his son Khemu finds peace in the afterlife, the Field of Reeds, that his death as a result of the Proto-Templars is avenged. His son's name, as is clear in the last Siwa Quest ("Bayek's Promise") is based on Kemet, the Hieroglyphic word the natives used to call their land, as opposed to Egypt, the Greek word based on a transliteration of the Temple of Ptah in Memphis. There's a joke waiting to be written about how we use the Greek Word for Egypt (Kemet) and the Latin word for Greece (Hellas). Most of Origins because of its religious and spiritual dimension for Bayek, and his personal grief, so we see repeatedly Bayek doing missions for Temple Priests, fighting corrupt priests and so on. Bayek's religious devotion, as an Egyptian polytheist, also brings him in conflict with Aya, his half-Greek wife who is way more keyed into the political side of stuff, and who is more like a traditional Assassin protagonist for better and worse. And Aya is the one who gets Bayek involved in the Civil War between Ptolemy XIII and Cleopatra VII, backing the latter and helping her come to power. Of these characters, very little is known about Apollodorous, Lucius Septimus and so on. So the game's take on them has the artistic license it needs.
The historical plot begins when Bayek comes to Alexandria, and meets Cleopatra in the mission "Egypt's Medjay". Cleopatra is one of the most speculated among historical figures because even if she comes from a period from which we have a lot of written sources (the First Century BCE), nearly everything that we know of her comes decades later, and much of it comes from the propaganda put forth by Augustus in his Civil War against Antony. That propaganda depending on how you see it either demonized her, or exaggerated her as more important than she likely deserved to be. In any case, recent biographers note that she was pretty young when she contested her Brother-Husband Ptolemy XIII to rule as Pharoah. The game's Cleopatra is not as young as she was, which was around 18-19 at the time she began her famous visit to the South to gain support from Egypt's traditional elite. She is also shown as this slutty vamp who comes on to Bayek and wears seductive dresses and so on, and is basically some Ptolemaic Lindsay Lohan. In actual fact, biographers like Stacy Schiff and Adrian Goldsworthy argue that it's highly likely she was a virgin when she met Caesar, and that it was Caesar who deflowered her. So this Cleopatra is more or less a redux of Caterina Sforza from AC2 in all matters. The game also follows recent tradition in focusing on Ptolemy XIII as her only rival. In actual fact the Alexandrine Civil War was a four-sided civil war with Cleopatra fighting Ptolemy XIII, another brother called Ptolemy, and her sister Arsinoe (sent to Rome as part of Caesar's triumph, but who the Roman mob so pitied that Caesar spared her and then had her live as a hostage. After his death, years later Antony executed her, likely on Cleopatra's orders). Cleopatra's appearance has an entire cottage industry dedicated to how beautiful she was or wasn't, with again everything depending on how much we can rely on Roman standards of beauty and whether it's consistent with Western norms today. Some posthumous mural has her with Red Hair and she was part of a dynasty of Macedonian inbred brother-sister marriages. But on the other hand, there's that report about her sister Arsinoe's tomb having African ancestry. In either case it doesn't matter, because Origins' Cleopatra looks almost exactly like her design from Asterix comics.
The bigger issue for me at least is her accent. In Origins, the developers took the decision to have Egyptians or Egyptian-Greeks talk with an accented English, while Ptolemaics and Romans talk like British, just like the Old Hollywood Ancient Epics. The problem is that one of the few widely known facts about Cleopatra is that she was the only one of her dynasty who learned the native Egyptian language, and indeed knew many languages including Hebrew and others. In the game we see Cleopatra speak in this accented English, when she should ideally sound like Bayek and Aya, or at least less like the other Ptolemaic-Romans. I personally think this could have been done if they used American accents which has more variety and diversity than British accents do, and it's one of those affectations, similar to UNITY's Napoleon the Corsican's English accent sounding like every other Parisien's, that for the sake of entertainment ends up communicating a distorted view.
Then we meet Pompeius Magnus on sea in Aya's first naval mission. This mission has Cleopatra secretly sending Aya as her agent to meet Pompey to get his support before Ptolemy XIII's. There's no record of Cleopatra seeking Pompey's alliance before Caesar. Their paths did cross when Pompey in his Conqueror of the East phase sent the Gabinus and other Roman soldiers to intervene in Egypt thus leading to the Gabiniani (as they ended up being known) settling there and becoming partly Hellenized. But Cleopatra was a small child at that time. Pompey the Great looks like his sculpture but he looks too young, when he was noted for having lost a lot of his good looks at the time of his death. And politically it makes no sense to court Pompey's alliance now, because Pompey post-Pharsalia coming to Egypt was being chased by the guy who kicked his ass. And it was fear of Caesar that led to his death at the orders of Ptolemy XIII and Pothinus.
The next historical mission is Cleopatra's meeting with Caesar ("Blade of the Goddess") which is an extended long mission. This scene makes a number of distortions from the record. We see Bayek and Co. with Cleopatra going to Pompey's side and then finding his decapitated body on the beach, and then deciding to go to Alexandria, where Cleopatra was exiled from, and meet Caesar. The meeting, as in Plutarch, has her wrapped in carpet, but rather than have that meeting in private (hence the whole carpet thing) we have her unfurled in the room with Caesar and Ptolemy XIII. We also see at the start of this cutscene, Caesar being presented Pompey's head and then shrugging it away. This is a huge distortion. Every source and every fictional version shows Caesar being grieved at seeing Pompey, ex-triumvir and ex-son-in-law being executed and especially at the hands of the smelly barbarian Egyptian-Greeks. Caesar like all Romans believed that every Roman citizen, and especially Roman heroes like Pompey, were worth more than any foreigner, king or peasant. And no rivalry towards Pompey would lead him to condone or shrugging away the execution of a Roman general at a foreign ruler's hands. Caesar's appearance has him looking like a John Slattery-type with a full head of white hair, when he was known for being balding and having a receding hairline (his own soldiers at his Triumphal parade called him, with affection, "the bald adulterer"). We have this weird thing about Caesar looking younger than recorded, and Cleopatra looking older, and I think the reasons why is to dial down the whole old-dude young-girl romance, again similar to Ezio and Caterina Sforza in AC2. Caesar's personality and character in ORIGINS is a major disappointment. This is one of the most important men in history, the guy whose calendar design is still in effect, but instead Caesar is shown as some clown, a puppet, and a bore. When Goldsworthy pointed out that when Caesar came to Alexandria, he actually relaxed, started drinking and going on binges with his soldiers, and was actually on vacation mode during his romance with Cleopatra. We also have Caesar having true love for Cleopatra. In real-life, Caesar's will left Cleopatra nothing. She was in Rome as a valued guest during the time of his assassination. Caesar according to Goldsworthy may have been fond of her, but it's more likely he saw her as another conquest. Since a bit later he had an affair with another Princess at Pergamum and a womanizer like him was probably not one to cast his wagon with a military-weak ruler like Ptolemaic-Egypt.
Then we have a very fast-forwarded portrayal of the Siege of Alexandria and the Nile. Aya lights a fire at the Pharos. Then in a repeat of Connor and Paul Revere, we have Bayek and Caesar on chariot. Which again, no way a Roman military commander like Caesar would allow. We also have Caesar mutter "The die is cast" the familiar translation of "Alea jacta est". In actual fact he quoted a Greek phrase from Menander, "anerriphtho kybos" which is actually closer to "Let's roll the dice". The difference in meaning is that "The die is cast" shows Caesar as being decisive and fatalistic, while "Let's roll the dice" shows him cautious, contingent, and improvising. Modern Caesar bios favor the second translation. Then we see Ptolemy XIII die in a cutscene, we see Caesar in a cutscene killing people like Jon Snow (which I feel we should have seen in the main game). We see Pothinus dying in a boss-fight when he was just executed by Caesar. Then in the aftermath, we see Caesar sparing Lucius Septimus, the Gabiniani who killed Khemu. Septimus was a real-life figure and he disappeared from history. The Shaw Play Caesar and Cleopatra showed Caesar pardoning Septimus but there this was shown as an example of Caesar's famous clemency. Here this is shown as Caesar selling out and becoming a Templar, and Cleopatra turning him with her dreams up about matching up to Alexander. All of this are cliches from Mankiewicz's Cleopatra.
The last historical mission and also the end of the game is the big one, the Ides of March, which the game gets wrong on multiple levels. Before we see Brutus and Cassius in Egypt with Bayek and Aya. Neither of them were in Egypt at this time. Both were in Rome, and even then Brutus had a governorship in Gaul for a while. We see Aya plotting out Caesar's assassination and then she sails to Rome. She comes to the Roman Forum and the Theater of Pompey, which was used as a temporary location after the senate house got burnt down during Clodius Pulcher's cremation. So that's true. The Roman Forum of the Republican era is quite different from the ruins in Rome today. That was from Augustus' time and he leveled Republican architecture to create a new more imperial Rome. Also the Roman Forum should be huge and crowded whereas in Origins we see a military encampment. We see Caesar call a meeting at the Senate apparently to be asked to be made King. This is false on multiple levels. The Senate called Caesar. Caesar was planning to go to Parthia to avenge Crassus' death. We also see all the senate attacking Caesar, which is a common mistake, but actually some in the Senate tried to help to Caesar but couldn't get through. Others were panicked, such as Cicero. Others were afraid I guess. Brutus before he stabs Caesar says they want "land for the people". "Land for the People" was Caesar's policy which Brutus and his entire faction, optimates, opposed. Then Aya, disguised as a senator (which all things considered is the least ridiculous part), stabs Caesar, and then in post-cutscene she goes to Cleopatra. We see her with Caesarion who looks too old...he should be 3 years old. Aya says, "the people call you dead tyrant's whore" but Caesar was popular and beloved by the Roman people. He wasn't seen by them as tyrannical. Quite the opposite. And nobody called Cleopatra anything until decades later with Mark Antony. Then the campaign ends.
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS
- ORIGINS has a major problem at its core. Namely that Bayek of Siwa's personal quest as a grief-stricken father which is indeed touching, well-written, well-acted and well-animated, doesn't fully fit the larger story of Cleopatra's reign and downfall, the death of Caesar, and the establishment of the Proto-Assassin Cult. That actually fits Aya's story better. Aya is the one who gets the missions doing the historical stuff and she gets to kill Caesar (on which more later) but it's obvious that Bayek is the main central character since he gets the side-missions and as a native Egyptian Medjay, and a practicing polytheist he's the one who better immerses us in the open world.
- This problem in the narrative's plot is peculiarly a result of the game's historical accuracy in showing the segregation of Ptolemaic Egypt. Ptolemaic Egypt, especially in Cleopatra's reign, is often romanticized as a time of cultural hybridity, where Greek culture synthesized with Ancient Egyptian culture. A lot of this comes from Ptolemaic propaganda, and the game's cutscenes often show and state this. What with Aya being part-Greek, and her marriage with Bayek as well as the Greek-Egyptian couple of Hotephres-Khenut in Faiyum Oasis. The reality is that the Ptolemaic era was quite segregated which indeed led some historians to, controversially, describe this era not as multi-culturalism but as an earlier form of apartheid where Greeks held all important positions in government, civic administration, military and cultural power, while Native Egyptians were never promoted to real positions of power and were left alone rather than oppressed and enslaved. There were separate law codes for Greeks and Egyptians and so on. Order was maintained in Egypt over a small minority thanks to foreign powers like the Persians, the Greeks, and then the Romans, patronizing, suborning, and supporting the Egyptian priestly caste, who encouraged the population to turn to religion and away from society. We see this in Origins with Bayek's religious devotion to the Egyptian pantheon which creates a subtle tension in his marriage to Aya who is Part-Greek and has a more skeptical and cynical attitude to religion. That scene where they talk at Alexander's tomb and offer contrasting opinions on that formidable asshole is quite insightful. Within the game, Bayek has no curiosity over any other faith or set of gods other than that of Egypt, which does illustrate and correct the common idea that all pre-christian polytheism was syncretic and inclusionary, when in fact that syncretism was exclusive to Roman society. Bayek's religious quest brings him in conflict with a few bad priests but it never has him interrogate the entire system which kept Egypt down, and the political turn in Bayek's quest never really works as compared to his own internal story.
- In terms of historical recreation, the most important city in the game is Alexandria. The Alexandria of this game is extremely small compared to the real thing. The real Alexandria was divided into five quarters based on the first five letters of the Greek Alphabet: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon. It was a city organized on a grid. And the city had a huge population for the ancient world, more than 500,000 in Cleopatra's reign at a conservative estimate, a more generous one suggests a million and it certainly did see that in the later Roman era. There should be as many NPCs here as we saw in UNITY, instead we see a city that resembles the Medieval-Renaissance sandboxes of the Altair-Ezio games, or for that matter the Colonial settlements from the New World games. One of the reasons why Alexandria, and Rome (which had a population of a million in the same time) fascinated people for so long, was that it would take more than a millennium for European cities of that scale to rise. That was as much a real reason for the grandeur and myth that was attached to it as was the famous monuments, the Library, and the Lighthouse. Alexandria also hosted at this time the largest Jewish community outside Judea, and 2 out of 5 quarters had Jewish majorities. There were synagogues across the entire city. Yet within this game we have one Synagogue and some Hebrew-speaking NPCs with no Jewish characters in the main game, the side-stories or even mentioned in the Discovery Tour. Alexandrian Jews were major supporters and backers of Caesar when he took the city and settled in, and given the early bad reception he and Romans got (the mob pelted them according to Goldsworthy), they were obviously a swing vote group. Caesar who was popular with Jewish settlers in Rome, actually passed laws in their favour. In other words, Jews were essential and key parts of this story, and yet once again Ubisoft neglects them from a period in which they were central to. Alexandrian Jews under the Ptolemies translated the Tanakh from Hebrew into Greek, known today as the Septuagint, and many of them contributed to what we now call Gnosticism. Origins denied us a chance to glimpse Jewish life before their exile, diaspora, and persecution. Which is one of the main reasons why an Ancient World setting is so fascinating and important to us even today.
- ORIGINS gets Alexandria wrong, and if it got Alexandria wrong, I am wondering why they chose Ptolemaic Egypt rather than an earlier period. As many historians point out Cleopatra's era is closer to us today than she is to the period of the Great Pyramids. Bayek's main religious quest and interests as a Medjay has nothing real attached to Cleopatra's reign both in terms of history, and in his own personal story quest, since Cleopatra's story is tied to his wife Aya, who very definitely doesn't share his religious inclinations (which again makes me wonder why they married). Ideally Bayek's religious devotion to the traditional gods and his general conservatism would make him suited to the reign of Akhenaten, and indeed the Curse of the Pharaohs DLC where he hunts down ghosts and phantoms of Akhenaten's court, including his wife Nefertiti and his son Tutankhamun, obviously embellished with fantasy hijinks and so on, actually gives him a more interesting character dynamic as someone who opposes the legacy of "the heretic" who tried to reverse Egypt's gods. Doing a religious conflict with entirely ancient and dead faiths (as opposed to the ones which still alive) would have been a more original story. Most of Origins' sandbox and gameplay is tied to the deserts, the small settlements, the pyramids, the tombs, but the plot is entirely confined to palace politics to which Bayek has no affection, for either the cities or its rulers. Fundamentally, Ptolemaic Cleopatra is not Ancient Egypt and its portrayal of Cleopatra as mentioned above is inaccurate and cliched, and sentimental. The lack of diversity and accuracy of detail in Alexandria makes it a failure of historical representation. The only reason it seems to be here is because AC wanted a familiar and overexposed and so easily retold story about Caesar and Cleopatra with a handy set of cliches to regurgitate. AC's in-house historian Maxime Durand in this interview with Bob Whitaker confessed that they wanted to do Republican Rome along with parts of Greece and Egypt. Which would be fine if it actually got something right about Roman politics, but as mentioned above it didn't. But more later.
- Following Ubisoft's 30-second rule, I checked up Siwa Oasis on wikipedia. Do you know what takes about six seconds to find? This paragraph on Siwa's native homosexual tolerance. Siwa Oasis according to historians and anthropologists has a documented tradition of welcoming, tolerating, and celebrating homosexual unions between men in the Islamic era which continued until the middle of the 20th Century when Nasser came to power. Some historians and anthropologists believe that this tradition could date back to antiquity, and represents a holdover or carryover from the Polytheistic era to the Christian and Islamic eras. Instead, we get no mention of this, no acknowledgement or hint of this anywhere. Not in Discovery Tour, not in side missions, and not the main quest. There is no mention of homosexuality within any of the main games, and instead there is this utterly sleazy easter egg. Bayek's relations within Siwa are all with women, Hepzefa, Aya, Kensa with no hint of him being gay or experimenting. I suppose Ubisoft thinks, based on Odyssey and its Three Hundred digital cosplay, that the only boy-lovers were in Athens and not in any part of the East, or so on. This information is even there in Travel Guides to Egypt, leave alone academic works (see sources below).
- Likewise, not dealing with slavery in the Renaissance is bad enough, but not dealing or acknowledging its reality in the Ancient World is a new level of denial because virtually every fictional depiction of the ancient world deals with slavery. Now obviously many Egyptologists and native Egyptians get upset with "the slaves built the pyramids thing" and so on (which isn't entirely debunked but certainly qualified better now), and Egyptians seem to have favored freedmen more than Greece and Rome, but there was definitely slavery from the time the Macedonians and Ptolemaics arrived. Aya and Bayek talk a lot about freedom and I wonder why they don't deal with slavery.
- The most interesting thing in Origins is the attitude to children. Historically, Rome and Greece practised infanticide, where deformed children or a kid that seemed weak would be dumped out, literally in garbage, which happened in the classical era of both civilizations. Children were also exposed to the elements, and exposed children were sold into slavery. According to Pomeroy and other historians, this practice was less common in Egypt of the same time. Infanticide wasn't practised as much, and exposed children were often picked up and nurtured and adopted as compared to Rome and Greece, where strangers would let them die. In Origins, we see Greek and Roman characters more callous about hurting and killing children, whether it's the Templar who kills Bayek's son, or the Greek woman Berenike who drowns Khadja or Cleopatra ordering the death of her annoying kid brother. So in Bayek's attitude and nurturing feeling towards children, both his son, and others, we actually see a good accurate impression of Egypt's great positive virtue which is worthy of praise and admiration. Origins has us see many children in the side missions and the main story, and it's rare to see an open-world game deal with that, leave alone something as violent and bloody as Origins.
- The title of Origins has gotten a lot of chuckles from AC fans. The AC Lore has Proto-Assassins to the time of Ancient Greece. The game Odyssey announced a few months after launch only made it even more ridiculous. Ptolemaic Egypt in the time of Cleopatra isn't an origin so much as a curtain call, a finale, and a farewell. But there is in on respect the title is apt, namely in that it shows us the original political assassination, the model for many copycats and repeats**.** This brings me to my final point. what is after all the fundamental element of Assassin's Creed, the fact that these games and its narratives repeatedly justifies and glorifies murder, especially when the victims are heads of state, guilty, and tyrants, which is absurd because as I showed in my commentary on earlier games, the Assassins more often than not serve some tyrants and attack others. But no story brings those issues as well as that of Julius Caesar's.
- The self-proclaimed Liberatores, Brutus and Cassius, who are numbered among the Assassins, weren't by any means good guys. Brutus, as per fellow conservative Cicero, a corrupt loan shark who sent goons to beat up the poor to get back his money. He and the Liberatores claimed to be restoring the Republic, but in practice they were acting like every other optimate faction who had murdered popular reformers from the time of the Gracchi. During his civil war with the 2nd Triumvirate, Brutus minted coins showing his face on it, which was illegal and against the norms, and following in the same vein as Pompey and Caesar. In other words, according to the historical view by Mary Beard and Adrian Goldsworthy, there is good reason to think Brutus would have been another warlord or dictator had he not lost and gotten "martyred" for liberty. And this is the kind of figure, AC has hitched to their wagon. Historically every good treatment of Caesar's assassination that I know presents this as a tragic act, steeped in horror at the violence, the betrayal by Caesar's closest friends, the act of murder happening in a hall of government. The fact that the assassination unleashed a spiral of civil war and led to the Empire. Origins treats this as a tale of good senators versus evil Caesar and presents it as unambiguously heroic. This action which inspired John Wilkes Booth to attack Lincoln thinking he was Brutus, as well as many other figures who justified other "propaganda of the deed" and which provided the model for Gavrilo Princip attacking the Archduke is reduced to a level below childish, because even small kids exposed to the Caesar story at a small age know that it's not to be celebrated. The failure to reckon with the gravity and ambiguity of this crime, the lack of reflection at the horror of their culpability in the fallout, is a major failure of this game, and ultimately it proves that Origins should not have been set in this Ptolemaic-Roman period since to the extent that the game deals with it, it fails.
CONCLUSION
- Let me say that I like Origins and I like Bayek. The Egypt of this game is unlike any other open-world setting and it looks amazing. The game shows the pyramids as they are now believed to have been, decorated, shiny, clean with caps at the top. This is probably the most accurate re-creation of the Ancient Pyramids than any pop-culture version of Egypt. The maps, the White Desert, the Black Desert and so on are amazing. I like getting heat-stroke by being in the desert and so on. The main redeeming virtue is its positive portrayal of Egyptian polytheism and sympathetic look at "pagan" worship since too often it's demonized in Christian works, and deprecated in secular works as either "atheists-but-not-in-name" or "not-truly-important". Egyptian pantheon in particular is often demonized as a source of Mummy curses as compared to Greek/Roman/Norse mythology so Origins contributed positively by offering a counter-view. That's leaving aside the moment when they cast white actors to play gods that is. I have no idea how accurate it is to Egyptian beliefs but Origins certainly gave me more insight into it than any other mainstream work.
The combat is obviously imported from Dark Souls, but it's still fitting because it feels like a sword-and-sandal peplum thing even if the combat tactics and maneuvers are very Hollywood. However, I will say that the main story at least the historical part is a huge letdown, it doesn't connect to Bayek's story, which given that he belongs to an older period of Egypt, the game should have been set in the time when that culture was still alive and not subjugated by foreigners. AC like many Western game companies have a hard time getting shareholders and marketers interested in real non-western settings, so whether it's AC1 and its choice on the minor Masyaf Assassins of the Third Crusade with its Western tenor rather than the Iranian Assassins of Alamut and its non-Western tenor, AC3's choice to make its story of a Mohawk revolve mainly on his white dad and his relations with white society; and Origins' decision to do a story and setting steeped in Ancient Lore in a time and place where the power is in the hands of European invaders, there's a timidity that prevents Ubisoft from taking the next step. The European games are likewise hampered by its obvious uncritical Eurocentrism and its refusal to engage with it outside the touristy EU propaganda stuff. Of the lot the New World games are the most interesting but even then not entirely successful. Every game, at its best and worst, shows some amount of compromise and timidity.
For all the credit it gets for shining a light on the unexpected and obscure, there's a hesitancy towards following through on the multi-culturalism that it announces on its disclaimer. The main attitude is reminiscent of Samuel Goldwyn's famous maxim, "let's invent some new cliches" or replace some cliches with new ones. There's a tendency towards touristy recreation and architecture over political and social development, older sources over newer ones.

SOURCES

Alexandria, City of the Western Mind. Theodore Vrettos. 2001. The Free Press, division of Simon and Schuster.- City divided into Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon districts as per the Greek Alphabet, Pg. 4- Jewish Quarter as large as the Greeks. Synagogues spread across the city. Two of five city quarters were inhabited by Jews.- Caesar's Will made no mention of Cleopatra.
Egypt, Greece and Rome - Civilization in the Ancient Mediterranean. Charles Freeman. Oxford University Press. 1999. Second Edition.- Augustus' propaganda against Antony, pg. 442-443.
A History of Ancient Egypt. Nicolas Grimal. Blackwell. 1999- Egyptians turned to religion, away from politics under the Persian, Hellenic and Roman eras. Pg. 367-368.
The Story of Egypt. Joann Fletcher. 2016. Pegasus Books.- Alexander's visit to the Oracle of Zeus-Ammon at Siwa oasis. 307-308.- Cleopatra's support from priests. 352-355.- Cleopatra's sister Arsinoe paraded in triumph. 367-358.- Caesar's Calendar. 358-359.
SPQR. Mary Beard. 2015. W.W. Norton.- Population of Rome was 1 million inhabitants in the First Century BCE. Pg. 33- Caesar's distasteful triumph. Pg. 290-291- Caesar introducing the Calendar after consulting Egyptian astronomers. Pg. 292- Mercenary motives of Caesar's assassins, who printed coins in their likeness. Pg. 294-296.
Cleopatra: A Life. Stacy Schiff. 2010. Little Brown and Company.- Population of Alexandria. High estimate is 3-6million, middle is 1 million, Low Estimate:500,000.
Adrian Goldsworthy, Caesar: Life of a Colossus. Yale University Press. 2006.- Caesar's arrival greeted by fears, Alexandrine mob pelted his troops. 433- Alexandrian Jews backed Caesar. 443-443- Caesar's time in Alexandria. More relaxed, looser, started drinking and went on binges. Taking a vacation with Cleopatra after his time of non-stop campaigning since crossing the Rubicon. 444-446.- Caesar's triumph, Arsinoe invoked pity. 468-469.- Caesar became so confident of his safety, that he dismissed his bodyguard of loyal Spanish soldiers. During his assassination, some Senators tried to reach Caesar to help him but couldn't get through or were afraid of being killed. The Roman Forum is crowded, the people rally in grief at Caesar's death, and Caesar gets a popular funeral. 505-510.
Adrian Goldsworthy. Antony and Cleopatra. Yale University Press. 2010. "Introduction"- summarizing thesis the marginal role Cleopatra in fact had. "The Two Lands", describing segregation in Ptolemaic Egypt.
Encyclopaedia of Homosexuality, Vol. 2. edited by Wayne R. Dynes. Routledge. March 2016. https://books.google.com/books?id=g7TOCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT448&dq=Siwa+homosexuality&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwitiMLqhMHdAhUPO60KHQOHCDwQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=Siwa%20homosexuality&f=false (Homosexuality in Ancient Siwa).
Egypt. Dan Richardson. Rough Guides. Travel. 2003https://books.google.com/books?id=uL86PAq-eHMC&pg=PA562&dq=Siwa+homosexuality&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwitiMLqhMHdAhUPO60KHQOHCDwQ6AEILjAB#v=onepage&q=Siwa%20homosexuality&f=false
The Many Faces of Homosexuality: Anthropological Approaches to Homosexual Behavior. Evelyn Blackwood. Routledge. 2013.
Hellenistic Constructs: Essays in Culture, History, and Historiography. edited by A G Leventis et al.University of California Press, 1997. https://books.google.com/books?id=LNCv7A05JWoC&pg=PA5&dq=Ptolemaic+apartheid&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjxj928hsHdAhUJVa0KHbxrC9MQ6AEILzAB#v=onepage&q=Ptolemaic%20apartheid&f=false(Apartheid rather than multiculturalism)
Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity. Sarah Pomeroy. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, May 18, 2011. Infanticide and Exposure of Children in Rome/Greece/Egypt.

Historical Inaccuracies in the AC Series all caught up: Caesar and Cleopatra according to Assassin's Creed Origins

I started this series with UNITY, then went to AC1, AC2, Brotherhood, Revelations, AC3 and Rogue. Black Flag. Syndicate. Now here we are. All caught up with Origins. The tenth major release of Assassin's Creed, and released in 2017, the ten year anniversary of the franchise.
As a game, ORIGINS presents a lot of challenges. One is this game is set in the Antiquity, the first AC game to go way back to the Pre-Crusades era. Then there is the size of ORIGINS, which is incredibly big, a recreation of a big swathe of Cleopatra' Egypt. There is also the volume of game content here on offer which is extensive and daunting. Ubisoft released the excellent Discovery Tour which substitutes for their database and maps out events and stuff on to terrain in an unique way. The game consulted a lot of Egyptologists for its recreation of the pyramids and managed to get ahead of a real-life archaeological discovery based on the theories of one of their consultants. The game has a huge number of side-quests and missions but most of them are errands of one kind or another, grounded however with a thematic unity with the main game's story. This makes them consistent and feel substantial but also repetitive and there's rarely an exploration of the world in a larger scope. As such I am mainly going to talk about the main campaign from beginning to end, while discussing side missions only in part.
Setting: Ptolemaic Egypt in the reign of Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator overlapping with the final leg of Caesar's Civil War and his dictatorship.
MAIN CAMPAIGN
Bayek is a Medjay, an ancient office in the Pharaonic age. Bayek blames the Ptolemies for the end of the Medjay but in fact it collapsed before Egypt's first foreign occupation by the Persians, who preceded Alexander. As such, Bayek's story has more fiction than history but we still have historical figures among the Proto-Templars, Lucius Septimus, the real-life Gabiniani Roman who killed Pompey Magnus, and Pothinus, the Royal Eunuch who was main henchman and minder of Ptolemy XIII. Among the Proto-Assassins, we have Pasherienptah III, an obscure priest of Memphis who is fictionalized here, and of course we have Marcus Junius Brutus, and Cassius among Aya's Roman recruits who show up at the end of the game. Other historical figures we see are: Ptolemy XIII, Cleopatra VII, Julius Caesar, Pompey Magnus, Apollodorous the Sicilian, Marcus Vitruvius.
The main story of Origins is entirely about Bayek's religious quest to ensure that his son Khemu finds peace in the afterlife, the Field of Reeds, that his death as a result of the Proto-Templars is avenged. His son's name, as is clear in the last Siwa Quest ("Bayek's Promise") is based on Kemet, the Hieroglyphic word the natives used to call their land, as opposed to Egypt, the Greek word based on a transliteration of the Temple of Ptah in Memphis. There's a joke waiting to be written about how we use the Greek Word for Egypt (Kemet) and the Latin word for Greece (Hellas). Most of Origins because of its religious and spiritual dimension for Bayek, and his personal grief, so we see repeatedly Bayek doing missions for Temple Priests, fighting corrupt priests and so on. Bayek's religious devotion, as an Egyptian polytheist, also brings him in conflict with Aya, his half-Greek wife who is way more keyed into the political side of stuff, and who is more like a traditional Assassin protagonist for better and worse. And Aya is the one who gets Bayek involved in the Civil War between Ptolemy XIII and Cleopatra VII, backing the latter and helping her come to power. Of these characters, very little is known about Apollodorous, Lucius Septimus and so on. So the game's take on them has the artistic license it needs.
The historical plot begins when Bayek comes to Alexandria, and meets Cleopatra in the mission "Egypt's Medjay". Cleopatra is one of the most speculated among historical figures because even if she comes from a period from which we have a lot of written sources (the First Century BCE), nearly everything that we know of her comes decades later, and much of it comes from the propaganda put forth by Augustus in his Civil War against Antony. That propaganda depending on how you see it either demonized her, or exaggerated her as more important than she likely deserved to be. In any case, recent biographers note that she was pretty young when she contested her Brother-Husband Ptolemy XIII to rule as Pharoah. The game's Cleopatra is not as young as she was, which was around 18-19 at the time she began her famous visit to the South to gain support from Egypt's traditional elite. She is also shown as this slutty vamp who comes on to Bayek and wears seductive dresses and so on, and is basically some Ptolemaic Lindsay Lohan. In actual fact, biographers like Stacy Schiff and Adrian Goldsworthy argue that it's highly likely she was a virgin when she met Caesar, and that it was Caesar who deflowered her. So this Cleopatra is more or less a redux of Caterina Sforza from AC2 in all matters. The game also follows recent tradition in focusing on Ptolemy XIII as her only rival. In actual fact the Alexandrine Civil War was a four-sided civil war with Cleopatra fighting Ptolemy XIII, another brother called Ptolemy, and her sister Arsinoe (sent to Rome as part of Caesar's triumph, but who the Roman mob so pitied that Caesar spared her and then had her live as a hostage. After his death, years later Antony executed her, likely on Cleopatra's orders). Cleopatra's appearance has an entire cottage industry dedicated to how beautiful she was or wasn't, with again everything depending on how much we can rely on Roman standards of beauty and whether it's consistent with Western norms today. Some posthumous mural has her with Red Hair and she was part of a dynasty of Macedonian inbred brother-sister marriages. But on the other hand, there's that report about her sister Arsinoe's tomb having African ancestry. In either case it doesn't matter, because Origins' Cleopatra looks almost exactly like her design from Asterix comics.
The bigger issue for me at least is her accent. In Origins, the developers took the decision to have Egyptians or Egyptian-Greeks talk with an accented English, while Ptolemaics and Romans talk like British, just like the Old Hollywood Ancient Epics. The problem is that one of the few widely known facts about Cleopatra is that she was the only one of her dynasty who learned the native Egyptian language, and indeed knew many languages including Hebrew and others. In the game we see Cleopatra speak in this accented English, when she should ideally sound like Bayek and Aya, or at least less like the other Ptolemaic-Romans. I personally think this could have been done if they used American accents which has more variety and diversity than British accents do, and it's one of those affectations, similar to UNITY's Napoleon the Corsican's English accent sounding like every other Parisien's, that for the sake of entertainment ends up communicating a distorted view.
Then we meet Pompeius Magnus on sea in Aya's first naval mission. This mission has Cleopatra secretly sending Aya as her agent to meet Pompey to get his support before Ptolemy XIII's. There's no record of Cleopatra seeking Pompey's alliance before Caesar. Their paths did cross when Pompey in his Conqueror of the East phase sent the Gabinus and other Roman soldiers to intervene in Egypt thus leading to the Gabiniani (as they ended up being known) settling there and becoming partly Hellenized. But Cleopatra was a small child at that time. Pompey the Great looks like his sculpture but he looks too young, when he was noted for having lost a lot of his good looks at the time of his death. And politically it makes no sense to court Pompey's alliance now, because Pompey post-Pharsalia coming to Egypt was being chased by the guy who kicked his ass. And it was fear of Caesar that led to his death at the orders of Ptolemy XIII and Pothinus.
The next historical mission is Cleopatra's meeting with Caesar ("Blade of the Goddess") which is an extended long mission. This scene makes a number of distortions from the record. We see Bayek and Co. with Cleopatra going to Pompey's side and then finding his decapitated body on the beach, and then deciding to go to Alexandria, where Cleopatra was exiled from, and meet Caesar. The meeting, as in Plutarch, has her wrapped in carpet, but rather than have that meeting in private (hence the whole carpet thing) we have her unfurled in the room with Caesar and Ptolemy XIII. We also see at the start of this cutscene, Caesar being presented Pompey's head and then shrugging it away. This is a huge distortion. Every source and every fictional version shows Caesar being grieved at seeing Pompey, ex-triumvir and ex-son-in-law being executed and especially at the hands of the smelly barbarian Egyptian-Greeks. Caesar like all Romans believed that every Roman citizen, and especially Roman heroes like Pompey, were worth more than any foreigner, king or peasant. And no rivalry towards Pompey would lead him to condone or shrugging away the execution of a Roman general at a foreign ruler's hands. Caesar's appearance has him looking like a John Slattery-type with a full head of white hair, when he was known for being balding and having a receding hairline (his own soldiers at his Triumphal parade called him, with affection, "the bald adulterer"). We have this weird thing about Caesar looking younger than recorded, and Cleopatra looking older, and I think the reasons why is to dial down the whole old-dude young-girl romance, again similar to Ezio and Caterina Sforza in AC2. Caesar's personality and character in ORIGINS is a major disappointment. This is one of the most important men in history, the guy whose calendar design is still in effect, but instead Caesar is shown as some clown, a puppet, and a bore. When Goldsworthy pointed out that when Caesar came to Alexandria, he actually relaxed, started drinking and going on binges with his soldiers, and was actually on vacation mode during his romance with Cleopatra. We also have Caesar having true love for Cleopatra. In real-life, Caesar's will left Cleopatra nothing. She was in Rome as a valued guest during the time of his assassination. Caesar according to Goldsworthy may have been fond of her, but it's more likely he saw her as another conquest. Since a bit later he had an affair with another Princess at Pergamum and a womanizer like him was probably not one to cast his wagon with a military-weak ruler like Ptolemaic-Egypt.
Then we have a very fast-forwarded portrayal of the Siege of Alexandria and the Nile. Aya lights a fire at the Pharos. Then in a repeat of Connor and Paul Revere, we have Bayek and Caesar on chariot. Which again, no way a Roman military commander like Caesar would allow. We also have Caesar mutter "The die is cast" the familiar translation of "Alea jacta est". In actual fact he quoted a Greek phrase from Menander, "anerriphtho kybos" which is actually closer to "Let's roll the dice". The difference in meaning is that "The die is cast" shows Caesar as being decisive and fatalistic, while "Let's roll the dice" shows him cautious, contingent, and improvising. Modern Caesar bios favor the second translation. Then we see Ptolemy XIII die in a cutscene, we see Caesar in a cutscene killing people like Jon Snow (which I feel we should have seen in the main game). We see Pothinus dying in a boss-fight when he was just executed by Caesar. Then in the aftermath, we see Caesar sparing Lucius Septimus, the Gabiniani who killed Khemu. Septimus was a real-life figure and he disappeared from history. The Shaw Play Caesar and Cleopatra showed Caesar pardoning Septimus but there this was shown as an example of Caesar's famous clemency. Here this is shown as Caesar selling out and becoming a Templar, and Cleopatra turning him with her dreams up about matching up to Alexander. All of this are cliches from Mankiewicz's Cleopatra.
The last historical mission and also the end of the game is the big one, the Ides of March, which the game gets wrong on multiple levels. Before we see Brutus and Cassius in Egypt with Bayek and Aya. Neither of them were in Egypt at this time. Both were in Rome, and even then Brutus had a governorship in Gaul for a while. We see Aya plotting out Caesar's assassination and then she sails to Rome. She comes to the Roman Forum and the Theater of Pompey, which was used as a temporary location after the senate house got burnt down during Clodius Pulcher's cremation. So that's true. The Roman Forum of the Republican era is quite different from the ruins in Rome today. That was from Augustus' time and he leveled Republican architecture to create a new more imperial Rome. Also the Roman Forum should be huge and crowded whereas in Origins we see a military encampment. We see Caesar call a meeting at the Senate apparently to be asked to be made King. This is false on multiple levels. The Senate called Caesar. Caesar was planning to go to Parthia to avenge Crassus' death. We also see all the senate attacking Caesar, which is a common mistake, but actually some in the Senate tried to help to Caesar but couldn't get through. Others were panicked, such as Cicero. Others were afraid I guess. Brutus before he stabs Caesar says they want "land for the people". "Land for the People" was Caesar's policy which Brutus and his entire faction, optimates, opposed. Then Aya, disguised as a senator (which all things considered is the least ridiculous part), stabs Caesar, and then in post-cutscene she goes to Cleopatra. We see her with Caesarion who looks too old...he should be 3 years old. Aya says, "the people call you dead tyrant's whore" but Caesar was popular and beloved by the Roman people. He wasn't seen by them as tyrannical. Quite the opposite. And nobody called Cleopatra anything until decades later with Mark Antony. Then the campaign ends.
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS
- ORIGINS has a major problem at its core. Namely that Bayek of Siwa's personal quest as a grief-stricken father which is indeed touching, well-written, well-acted and well-animated, doesn't fully fit the larger story of Cleopatra's reign and downfall, the death of Caesar, and the establishment of the Proto-Assassin Cult. That actually fits Aya's story better. Aya is the one who gets the missions doing the historical stuff and she gets to kill Caesar (on which more later) but it's obvious that Bayek is the main central character since he gets the side-missions and as a native Egyptian Medjay, and a practicing polytheist he's the one who better immerses us in the open world.
- This problem in the narrative's plot is peculiarly a result of the game's historical accuracy in showing the segregation of Ptolemaic Egypt. Ptolemaic Egypt, especially in Cleopatra's reign, is often romanticized as a time of cultural hybridity, where Greek culture synthesized with Ancient Egyptian culture. A lot of this comes from Ptolemaic propaganda, and the game's cutscenes often show and state this. What with Aya being part-Greek, and her marriage with Bayek as well as the Greek-Egyptian couple of Hotephres-Khenut in Faiyum Oasis. The reality is that the Ptolemaic era was quite segregated which indeed led some historians to, controversially, describe this era not as multi-culturalism but as an earlier form of apartheid where Greeks held all important positions in government, civic administration, military and cultural power, while Native Egyptians were never promoted to real positions of power and were left alone rather than oppressed and enslaved. There were separate law codes for Greeks and Egyptians and so on. Order was maintained in Egypt over a small minority thanks to foreign powers like the Persians, the Greeks, and then the Romans, patronizing, suborning, and supporting the Egyptian priestly caste, who encouraged the population to turn to religion and away from society. We see this in Origins with Bayek's religious devotion to the Egyptian pantheon which creates a subtle tension in his marriage to Aya who is Part-Greek and has a more skeptical and cynical attitude to religion. That scene where they talk at Alexander's tomb and offer contrasting opinions on that formidable asshole is quite insightful. Within the game, Bayek has no curiosity over any other faith or set of gods other than that of Egypt, which does illustrate and correct the common idea that all pre-christian polytheism was syncretic and inclusionary, when in fact that syncretism was exclusive to Roman society. Bayek's religious quest brings him in conflict with a few bad priests but it never has him interrogate the entire system which kept Egypt down, and the political turn in Bayek's quest never really works as compared to his own internal story.
- In terms of historical recreation, the most important city in the game is Alexandria. The Alexandria of this game is extremely small compared to the real thing. The real Alexandria was divided into five quarters based on the first five letters of the Greek Alphabet: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon. It was a city organized on a grid. And the city had a huge population for the ancient world, more than 500,000 in Cleopatra's reign at a conservative estimate, a more generous one suggests a million and it certainly did see that in the later Roman era. There should be as many NPCs here as we saw in UNITY, instead we see a city that resembles the Medieval-Renaissance sandboxes of the Altair-Ezio games, or for that matter the Colonial settlements from the New World games. One of the reasons why Alexandria, and Rome (which had a population of a million in the same time) fascinated people for so long, was that it would take more than a millennium for European cities of that scale to rise. That was as much a real reason for the grandeur and myth that was attached to it as was the famous monuments, the Library, and the Lighthouse. Alexandria also hosted at this time the largest Jewish community outside Judea, and 2 out of 5 quarters had Jewish majorities. There were synagogues across the entire city. Yet within this game we have one Synagogue and some Hebrew-speaking NPCs with no Jewish characters in the main game, the side-stories or even mentioned in the Discovery Tour. Alexandrian Jews were major supporters and backers of Caesar when he took the city and settled in, and given the early bad reception he and Romans got (the mob pelted them according to Goldsworthy), they were obviously a swing vote group. Caesar who was popular with Jewish settlers in Rome, actually passed laws in their favour. In other words, Jews were essential and key parts of this story, and yet once again Ubisoft neglects them from a period in which they were central to. Alexandrian Jews under the Ptolemies translated the Tanakh from Hebrew into Greek, known today as the Septuagint, and many of them contributed to what we now call Gnosticism. Origins denied us a chance to glimpse Jewish life before their exile, diaspora, and persecution. Which is one of the main reasons why an Ancient World setting is so fascinating and important to us even today.
- ORIGINS gets Alexandria wrong, and if it got Alexandria wrong, I am wondering why they chose Ptolemaic Egypt rather than an earlier period. As many historians point out Cleopatra's era is closer to us today than she is to the period of the Great Pyramids. Bayek's main religious quest and interests as a Medjay has nothing real attached to Cleopatra's reign both in terms of history, and in his own personal story quest, since Cleopatra's story is tied to his wife Aya, who very definitely doesn't share his religious inclinations (which again makes me wonder why they married). Ideally Bayek's religious devotion to the traditional gods and his general conservatism would make him suited to the reign of Akhenaten, and indeed the Curse of the Pharaohs DLC where he hunts down ghosts and phantoms of Akhenaten's court, including his wife Nefertiti and his son Tutankhamun, obviously embellished with fantasy hijinks and so on, actually gives him a more interesting character dynamic as someone who opposes the legacy of "the heretic" who tried to reverse Egypt's gods. Doing a religious conflict with entirely ancient and dead faiths (as opposed to the ones which still alive) would have been a more original story. Most of Origins' sandbox and gameplay is tied to the deserts, the small settlements, the pyramids, the tombs, but the plot is entirely confined to palace politics to which Bayek has no affection, for either the cities or its rulers. Fundamentally, Ptolemaic Cleopatra is not Ancient Egypt and its portrayal of Cleopatra as mentioned above is inaccurate and cliched, and sentimental. The lack of diversity and accuracy of detail in Alexandria makes it a failure of historical representation. The only reason it seems to be here is because AC wanted a familiar and overexposed and so easily retold story about Caesar and Cleopatra with a handy set of cliches to regurgitate. AC's in-house historian Maxime Durand in this interview with Bob Whitaker confessed that they wanted to do Republican Rome along with parts of Greece and Egypt. Which would be fine if it actually got something right about Roman politics, but as mentioned above it didn't. But more later.
- Following Ubisoft's 30-second rule, I checked up Siwa Oasis on wikipedia. Do you know what takes about six seconds to find? This paragraph on Siwa's native homosexual tolerance. Siwa Oasis according to historians and anthropologists has a documented tradition of welcoming, tolerating, and celebrating homosexual unions between men in the Islamic era which continued until the middle of the 20th Century when Nasser came to power. Some historians and anthropologists believe that this tradition could date back to antiquity, and represents a holdover or carryover from the Polytheistic era to the Christian and Islamic eras. Instead, we get no mention of this, no acknowledgement or hint of this anywhere. Not in Discovery Tour, not in side missions, and not the main quest. There is no mention of homosexuality within any of the main games, and instead there is this utterly sleazy easter egg. Bayek's relations within Siwa are all with women, Hepzefa, Aya, Kensa with no hint of him being gay or experimenting. I suppose Ubisoft thinks, based on Odyssey and its Three Hundred digital cosplay, that the only boy-lovers were in Athens and not in any part of the East, or so on. This information is even there in Travel Guides to Egypt, leave alone academic works (see sources below).
- Likewise, not dealing with slavery in the Renaissance is bad enough, but not dealing or acknowledging its reality in the Ancient World is a new level of denial because virtually every fictional depiction of the ancient world deals with slavery. Now obviously many Egyptologists and native Egyptians get upset with "the slaves built the pyramids thing" and so on (which isn't entirely debunked but certainly qualified better now), and Egyptians seem to have favored freedmen more than Greece and Rome, but there was definitely slavery from the time the Macedonians and Ptolemaics arrived. Aya and Bayek talk a lot about freedom and I wonder why they don't deal with slavery.
- The most interesting thing in Origins is the attitude to children. Historically, Rome and Greece practised infanticide, where deformed children or a kid that seemed weak would be dumped out, literally in garbage, which happened in the classical era of both civilizations. Children were also exposed to the elements, and exposed children were sold into slavery. According to Pomeroy and other historians, this practice was less common in Egypt of the same time. Infanticide wasn't practised as much, and exposed children were often picked up and nurtured and adopted as compared to Rome and Greece, where strangers would let them die. In Origins, we see Greek and Roman characters more callous about hurting and killing children, whether it's the Templar who kills Bayek's son, or the Greek woman Berenike who drowns Khadja or Cleopatra ordering the death of her annoying kid brother. So in Bayek's attitude and nurturing feeling towards children, both his son, and others, we actually see a good accurate impression of Egypt's great positive virtue which is worthy of praise and admiration. Origins has us see many children in the side missions and the main story, and it's rare to see an open-world game deal with that, leave alone something as violent and bloody as Origins.
- The title of Origins has gotten a lot of chuckles from AC fans. The AC Lore has Proto-Assassins to the time of Ancient Greece. The game Odyssey announced a few months after launch only made it even more ridiculous. Ptolemaic Egypt in the time of Cleopatra isn't an origin so much as a curtain call, a finale, and a farewell. But there is in on respect the title is apt, namely in that it shows us the original political assassination, the model for many copycats and repeats**.** This brings me to my final point. what is after all the fundamental element of Assassin's Creed, the fact that these games and its narratives repeatedly justifies and glorifies murder, especially when the victims are heads of state, guilty, and tyrants, which is absurd because as I showed in my commentary on earlier games, the Assassins more often than not serve some tyrants and attack others. But no story brings those issues as well as that of Julius Caesar's.
- The self-proclaimed Liberatores, Brutus and Cassius, who are numbered among the Assassins, weren't by any means good guys. Brutus, as per fellow conservative Cicero, a corrupt loan shark who sent goons to beat up the poor to get back his money. He and the Liberatores claimed to be restoring the Republic, but in practice they were acting like every other optimate faction who had murdered popular reformers from the time of the Gracchi. During his civil war with the 2nd Triumvirate, Brutus minted coins showing his face on it, which was illegal and against the norms, and following in the same vein as Pompey and Caesar. In other words, according to the historical view by Mary Beard and Adrian Goldsworthy, there is good reason to think Brutus would have been another warlord or dictator had he not lost and gotten "martyred" for liberty. And this is the kind of figure, AC has hitched to their wagon. Historically every good treatment of Caesar's assassination that I know presents this as a tragic act, steeped in horror at the violence, the betrayal by Caesar's closest friends, the act of murder happening in a hall of government. The fact that the assassination unleashed a spiral of civil war and led to the Empire. Origins treats this as a tale of good senators versus evil Caesar and presents it as unambiguously heroic. This action which inspired John Wilkes Booth to attack Lincoln thinking he was Brutus, as well as many other figures who justified other "propaganda of the deed" and which provided the model for Gavrilo Princip attacking the Archduke is reduced to a level below childish, because even small kids exposed to the Caesar story at a small age know that it's not to be celebrated. The failure to reckon with the gravity and ambiguity of this crime, the lack of reflection at the horror of their culpability in the fallout, is a major failure of this game, and ultimately it proves that Origins should not have been set in this Ptolemaic-Roman period since to the extent that the game deals with it, it fails.
CONCLUSION
- Let me say that I like Origins and I like Bayek. The Egypt of this game is unlike any other open-world setting and it looks amazing. The game shows the pyramids as they are now believed to have been, decorated, shiny, clean with caps at the top. This is probably the most accurate re-creation of the Ancient Pyramids than any pop-culture version of Egypt. The maps, the White Desert, the Black Desert and so on are amazing. I like getting heat-stroke by being in the desert and so on. The main redeeming virtue is its positive portrayal of Egyptian polytheism and sympathetic look at "pagan" worship since too often it's demonized in Christian works, and deprecated in secular works as either "atheists-but-not-in-name" or "not-truly-important". Egyptian pantheon in particular is often demonized as a source of Mummy curses as compared to Greek/Roman/Norse mythology so Origins contributed positively by offering a counter-view. That's leaving aside the moment when they cast white actors to play gods that is. I have no idea how accurate it is to Egyptian beliefs but Origins certainly gave me more insight into it than any other mainstream work.
The combat is obviously imported from Dark Souls, but it's still fitting because it feels like a sword-and-sandal peplum thing even if the combat tactics and maneuvers are very Hollywood. However, I will say that the main story at least the historical part is a huge letdown, it doesn't connect to Bayek's story, which given that he belongs to an older period of Egypt, the game should have been set in the time when that culture was still alive and not subjugated by foreigners. AC like many Western game companies have a hard time getting shareholders and marketers interested in real non-western settings, so whether it's AC1 and its choice on the minor Masyaf Assassins of the Third Crusade with its Western tenor rather than the Iranian Assassins of Alamut and its non-Western tenor, AC3's choice to make its story of a Mohawk revolve mainly on his white dad and his relations with white society; and Origins' decision to do a story and setting steeped in Ancient Lore in a time and place where the power is in the hands of European invaders, there's a timidity that prevents Ubisoft from taking the next step. The European games are likewise hampered by its obvious uncritical Eurocentrism and its refusal to engage with it outside the touristy EU propaganda stuff. Of the lot the New World games are the most interesting but even then not entirely successful. Every game, at its best and worst, shows some amount of compromise and timidity.
For all the credit it gets for shining a light on the unexpected and obscure, there's a hesitancy towards following through on the multi-culturalism that it announces on its disclaimer. The main attitude is reminiscent of Samuel Goldwyn's famous maxim, "let's invent some new cliches" or replace some cliches with new ones. There's a tendency towards touristy recreation and architecture over political and social development, older sources over newer ones.
SOURCES

Alexandria, City of the Western Mind. Theodore Vrettos. 2001. The Free Press, division of Simon and Schuster.- City divided into Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon districts as per the Greek Alphabet, Pg. 4- Jewish Quarter as large as the Greeks. Synagogues spread across the city. Two of five city quarters were inhabited by Jews.- Caesar's Will made no mention of Cleopatra.
Egypt, Greece and Rome - Civilization in the Ancient Mediterranean. Charles Freeman. Oxford University Press. 1999. Second Edition.- Augustus' propaganda against Antony, pg. 442-443.
A History of Ancient Egypt. Nicolas Grimal. Blackwell. 1999- Egyptians turned to religion, away from politics under the Persian, Hellenic and Roman eras. Pg. 367-368.
The Story of Egypt. Joann Fletcher. 2016. Pegasus Books.- Alexander's visit to the Oracle of Zeus-Ammon at Siwa oasis. 307-308.- Cleopatra's support from priests. 352-355.- Cleopatra's sister Arsinoe paraded in triumph. 367-358.- Caesar's Calendar. 358-359.
SPQR. Mary Beard. 2015. W.W. Norton.- Population of Rome was 1 million inhabitants in the First Century BCE. Pg. 33- Caesar's distasteful triumph. Pg. 290-291- Caesar introducing the Calendar after consulting Egyptian astronomers. Pg. 292- Mercenary motives of Caesar's assassins, who printed coins in their likeness. Pg. 294-296.
Cleopatra: A Life. Stacy Schiff. 2010. Little Brown and Company.- Population of Alexandria. High estimate is 3-6million, middle is 1 million, Low Estimate:500,000.
Adrian Goldsworthy, Caesar: Life of a Colossus. Yale University Press. 2006.- Caesar's arrival greeted by fears, Alexandrine mob pelted his troops. 433- Alexandrian Jews backed Caesar. 443-443- Caesar's time in Alexandria. More relaxed, looser, started drinking and went on binges. Taking a vacation with Cleopatra after his time of non-stop campaigning since crossing the Rubicon. 444-446.- Caesar's triumph, Arsinoe invoked pity. 468-469.- Caesar became so confident of his safety, that he dismissed his bodyguard of loyal Spanish soldiers. During his assassination, some Senators tried to reach Caesar to help him but couldn't get through or were afraid of being killed. The Roman Forum is crowded, the people rally in grief at Caesar's death, and Caesar gets a popular funeral. 505-510.
Adrian Goldsworthy. Antony and Cleopatra. Yale University Press. 2010. "Introduction"- summarizing thesis the marginal role Cleopatra in fact had. "The Two Lands", describing segregation in Ptolemaic Egypt.
Encyclopaedia of Homosexuality, Vol. 2. edited by Wayne R. Dynes. Routledge. March 2016. https://books.google.com/books?id=g7TOCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT448&dq=Siwa+homosexuality&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwitiMLqhMHdAhUPO60KHQOHCDwQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=Siwa%20homosexuality&f=false (Homosexuality in Ancient Siwa).
Egypt. Dan Richardson. Rough Guides. Travel. 2003https://books.google.com/books?id=uL86PAq-eHMC&pg=PA562&dq=Siwa+homosexuality&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwitiMLqhMHdAhUPO60KHQOHCDwQ6AEILjAB#v=onepage&q=Siwa%20homosexuality&f=false
The Many Faces of Homosexuality: Anthropological Approaches to Homosexual Behavior. Evelyn Blackwood. Routledge. 2013.
Hellenistic Constructs: Essays in Culture, History, and Historiography. edited by A G Leventis et al.University of California Press, 1997. https://books.google.com/books?id=LNCv7A05JWoC&pg=PA5&dq=Ptolemaic+apartheid&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjxj928hsHdAhUJVa0KHbxrC9MQ6AEILzAB#v=onepage&q=Ptolemaic%20apartheid&f=false(Apartheid rather than multiculturalism)
Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity. Sarah Pomeroy. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, May 18, 2011. Infanticide and Exposure of Children in Rome/Greece/Egypt.

How I left the Jehovah's Witnesses and extracted my family too. (Part 18)

(Continued ....)
Friday, October 9th, 2014. It's past 11 p.m. and I'm in bed, already asleep. My cell phone rings. On the other side, a familiar dark voice.
"Brother Eden? Good evening. This is brother COBE. The reason I'm calling is because you are being invited to come before a Judicial Committee and I'd like to arrange with you a convenient date." I see ... what's the accusation? "The accusation is apostasy". Ok ... Who's making that accusation? "I won't disclose that". Why not? Don't I deserve to know? What happened between now and the last meeting we had just recently? "The fact that sister N [my wife] stated that she wouldn't attend meetings anymore has given the Elders reason to believe that you have influenced her negatively. Hence, the Judicial Committee". Ahhh so that's why. Like my wife doesn't have a thinking head of her own. But since is she who's taking that step, shouldn't there be an Investigation Committee on her and ONLY THEN, if determined that I was involved in her decision, call for my JC? He became impatient. "Brother Eden, we need to put an end to this already. It's been dragging on for too long, don't you agree?" What do you mean by putting an end to this? Seems to me you have already judged and condemned me. Am I wrong? Are you sure this will be a fair trial or merely a farce? Are you going to sit there and be my judge AND my accuser as well? He ignored my questions. "Is next Wednesday evening convenient for you?" No, I said, I have work commitments all through next week and I also will need some time to prepare my defense. I'll get in touch with you tomorrow to set up a date ok? "Ok I'll await your contact. Good evening".
Aleas jacta est. The dice had been cast. Allegedly that's what Julius Caesar said when he crossed the Rubicon river in northern Italy, thus initiating a long civil war. The events have reached a point of no return and from here on it was war. And I went on the offensive the next day.
Saturday was the congregation's public meeting at 6 p.m. At lunch time I texted the following message to the COBE: "Good afternoon. For future record, make the summon in writing, indicating the names of the elders that will take part in it, what are the charges and who is filing those charges. You can send through my sister after today's meeting. I will then reply with a proposition of a date that will suit everyone. Thank you, Eden". Since there was no reply within the next couple of hours, I decided to go public, using Facebook. I took a screen shot of the message to the COBE and at 4 p.m. posted it on FB where I had a few dozens of brothers and sisters, with the following comment: "I was summoned by phone to appear before a Judicial Committee. In order that what is about to happen isn't kept under wraps, I replicate here my reply." Needless to say, there was a general gasp for the audacity and defiance of the establishment that I was displaying and at the meeting the news were being passed between the brethren. The Elders were just starting to find out just what they were up against.
How did it came to this?
My wife was never one to keep the steam inside for long. Soon after she decided to stop attending the meetings, keen eyes in our congregation noticed her absence and that reached her mother's ears in the neighboring congregation that also met at the same Kingdom Hall. So, one day she was visiting her bedridden mother and helping out, she was asked if she had been ill, because she has missed a few meetings. She then sat down and as tactfully as possible in a situation like this, she broke the news to her mother.
Needless to say, it was a huge shock. My wife refused to say why, except that she was depressed and disgusted with the witch hunt I had been subjected to, and that there were some things about the Organization that weren't right, but she did not wish to discuss that with her. After much crying, her mother said: "I knew that eventually Eden would turn your head around. He did it to your son and now you too are taking his side. You are also turning your back on Jehovah. He did this to you!" My wife tried to reassure her that she had a mind of her own and she reached her conclusions on her own, that she wasn't turning her back on Jehovah, that it was simply an issue with the Organization, and who knows she might reconsider and go back one day if things changed. But that didn't change her opinion. I imagine that, as soon as my wife left, she called her other daughter, married with the Circuit Overseer, and he called Bethel. And Bethel demanded my head.
My sister came from the meeting empty handed but I got a call from the COBE that evening. He tried to set a date for the JC, but I refused. I said: I told you in my message that once you give me a WRITTEN summon for the JC indicating the names of the Elders, the accusation, and who are my accusers, I will then set a date. I accept to go before a JC, but this must happen first. "That's not the way the Organization stipulates things to happen. Why are you insisting on it?", he asked. Well, perhaps it's time to change, I said. Frankly, at this point, I don't care what the Elders' manual says. There are laws in this country and, should I one day take this to a court of law, because this is a violation of my rights, I'll need all of this to be documented. So, in writing please. Then we will set a date. Goodnight.
From experiences I had previously read, I knew that it would be highly implausible that the Elders would comply with my demands. They simply don't want to leave a paper trail behind that may one day come back to bite them. But I left them on a difficult situation; on one hand, I told them that I accepted to go before a JC; this way they could not form a JC in absentia because that would be illegal. On the other hand, in order to get me to accept it, they would have to put it it writing. I just knew they were going to get Bethel's legal department involved.
But all these exchanges back and forth were designed to allow me to buy time. What for? I used Facebook to launch a PR campaign and put pressure on the Body Of Elders.
I started publishing memes on my FB page. I wish I could publish them here, but they are in Portuguese and I my FB page is not public anymore. But I will describe them to the best of my knowledge. I'm translating from Portuguese, so it may not always correspond word for word to the original quote.
October 12 | Meme #1: A picture of Nelson Mandela looking through prison bars with the following quote: "When you deny a man the right to live the life he believes in, he has no other choice but to become an outlaw". - Nelson Mandela".
October 12 - I published a song with the caption:"This is the music that best describes the moment that I'm living." The song is "Explorers" by Muse. It had lyrics like these: Once I hoped / to seek the new and unknown / This planet's overrun / there's nothing left for you or for me [...] Free me / free me from this world / I don't belong here / It was a mistake imprisoning my soul / can you free me / free me from this world
That same day, I noticed that I had a "like" on the post I made with the text message about the judicial meeting. I looked and lo and behold! It was from an Elder of my congregation!! I got perplexed. What on earth does this mean? I took a screenshot of the message and the name of the Elder and his "like" and sent it to him by text message without any further comments. Less than half hour later, the "like" had been removed. So I posted another meme:
October 12 | Meme #2- Depicted a red "un-like" thumbs down and on the side a "like" blue thumbs up. With the caption: There are truly odd things. I don't know what to think.
Of course, no one understood but him. Guess what? Some minutes later, I get a call from this Elder. Noticeably embarrassed, he told me that the "like" had been a slip of the finger, that he didn't mean to post the "like", thanked me for alerting him, and asked PLEASE not to share it with the other Elders. I tried so hard not to laugh, and assured him that it was not my intention to cause him any problems, but I would keep the screenshot as a souvenir =)
Next morning I noticed that some JW's had dropped from my FB. So I posted another meme.
October 13 | Meme #3: A picture of a sunset with two penguins facing the sun with their wings resting over each other's 'shoulders'. The caption read: "Genuine love, just like friendship, is only infallible when no conditions are imposed upon it".
That afternoon, two elders came to my door. One of them was the COBE's hound. I met them at the gate. "Brother Eden, we came to discuss with you a date for your JC". I asked them where was the written summon. "We don't bring any, that's not the procedure we have from the Organization" Well, then you have wasted your time. I say this again: I accept to go before the JC once I have the summon in writing, with the names of the elders, the accusation and who is accusing me. Tell that again to brother COBE. "Is Wednesday at 8 p.m. ok for you?", he said. Wtf? Did you not hear what I said? No, I cannot attend on that day due to work, and now get out of here because you're being insulting. Goodbye! I closed the gate on their nose and went inside. Now I was furious. They were playing dirty, so I upped my game.
October 14 | Meme #4- A classic painting depicting the stoning of Stephen (1795, by Jacobus Bays) The caption read: "They will throw you out of the synagogues. In fact, there will come a time when whomever kills you will imagine to have rendered a service to God - John 16:2" The post had the following message: Words of Jesus Christ that have been fulfilled since the first century until today ...
I posted then a music by Pink Floyd "Learning to Fly" and a recent interview with the young Malala Yousafzai, who was persecuted and shot by the Talibans for advocating the girl's rights to an education in Pakistan. Then I posted another meme:
October 14 | Meme #5 - A painting of King David playing the harp, (1611, by Gerhard Van Honthorst). The post said: Speaking of Malala and the Taliban in Pakistan, it came to my mind the Psalm 35, that brings solace to those persecuted without just cause. The caption read: "Let those be put to shame and brought to dishonor Who seek after my life ... For without cause they have hidden their net for me in a pit, Which they have dug without cause for my life. ... Fierce witnesses rise up;They ask me things that I do not know. They reward me evil for good, To the sorrow of my soul. ... Attackers gathered against me, And I did not know it; They tore at me and did not cease ... They gnashed at me with their teeth.... they do not speak peace, But they devise deceitful matters. Against the quiet ones in the land. They also opened their mouth wide against me, And said, “Aha, aha! Our eyes have seen it.” ... Vindicate me, O Lord my God, according to Your righteousness; And let them not rejoice over me."
The next day I had a few more memes in store ...
(To be continued ...)

[OC] Powerless Part 4: Brave New World

alea jacta est translation video

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Let's Play Rome Total War (Julier; German) 57b - Alea ...

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Translate alea jacta est from Latin to French - MyMemory

alea jacta est translation

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