CHAPTER 15
Kate Cook
Mobile gaming is one of the largest, fastest-growing areas of the gaming industry, making up 60 per cent of revenue for the global video game market in 2019, with estimated growth of 10.2 per cent year on year.1 Mobile games are furthermore associated with the widest demographic range of players, since mobile games are accessible to anyone with a smart phone, rather than requiring a gaming PC or console to play.2 Yet, these types of games have so far not been fully considered by research into the representation of antiquity in games, which often excludes them to focus on PC or console games.3 This chapter therefore puts the spotlight back on mobile gaming by considering the portrayal of women in the game Choices: Courtesan of Rome.
Choices: Stories You Play (2016), by Pixelberry studios, is a mobile game available on Android and iOS. It features a wide range of playable ‘books’ across a range of settings, each with slightly different game features and different stories, although the primary mechanics remain the same, and there is a strong romance element in most books.4 Players play through ‘chapters’ (originally released serially, often weekly) to progress the story, choosing dialogue options or actions at key points to advance the game. Although the broad strokes of the story remain the same, these choices can have an ongoing impact on the results of the game, including character relationships or aspects of the game’s ending. Microtransactions allow players to buy either ‘keys’ which unlock the ability to play more than two chapters in one session (otherwise players must wait for three hours for keys to recharge) or buy ‘diamonds’ to use to unlock bonus scenes (often romantic) or outfits which may make it possible to gain bonus points on the book’s checks. Diamonds can otherwise be gained by completing chapters or watching adverts within the game. Pixelberry Studios, the creators of Choices, founded in 2012, produced two of the first examples of this genre of game, Surviving High School and Cause of Death, before developing the popular High School Story, for which the studio worked with the charity Cybersmile to address the issue of bullying through the game, and the National Eating Disorders Association to tackle issues of body image and eating disorders, both with the stated aim of enabling players to be comfortable talking about these issues in their own lives.5 This socially conscious approach to writing their games has been maintained; Pixelberry describe their work as ‘story-driven games with heart’, with a clear focus on representation and social issues.6 Choices’ positioning of the player in the footsteps of a wide variety of characters to experience their story in fact also aligns closely with the type of diverse narratives which Shira Chess has identified as a key aspect of the feminist potential of videogames.7
Choices: A Courtesan of Rome, was released 2018–19.8 The game is set in a compressed version of 49–44 BC – the first chapter occurs as Caesar crosses the Rubicon, and the game ends with the assassination of Caesar in 44 BC, although the impression of time given is of a few weeks or months rather than years.9 The game’s plot is described as follows:
Make your debut as a courtesan in Ancient Rome and plot your vengeance against Julius Caesar for his conquest of your homeland.10
The player can only play as a female character,11 although they have a choice of face (including a choice of skin tone), hairstyle, clothes and names.12 The game’s lead writer, Jennifer Hepler, explained that Arin needed to meet the requirements of the ‘archetypal Choices protagonist’, who is nearly always female.13 The question for the writers of A Courtesan of Rome, therefore, was how to work around the limitations of the setting in Republican Rome, and have a female lead who told the story the writers wished to tell, without the players’ agency being circumscribed.
Making Arin a courtesan aimed to provide a model of female power and agency in this setting, as well as giving her a story arc of rising from her enslavement to a position of significant influence, desirable for Hepler in planning the game’s story.14 This model of power and influence is introduced to Arin and the player via a flashback scene where Arin arrives at the ‘schola’ run by Lena, a courtesan who boasts that her influence previously caused Sulla to march on Rome.15 In a conversation with Arin, when Arin asks ‘what power is there in serving men?’ Lena responds: ‘Men control everything in Rome. To wield our own power, we must control them.’16 The model of duplicitous, behind-the-scenes female power here is found in other representations of female characters of the ancient world, both in video games and beyond.17 Marc Antony’s presence in the game as one of the main four love interests,18 may also have shaped the development of the female main character, since he has traditionally been associated with courtesans.19 The financial model of the game further contributed to the choice by the writers to have the main character be a courtesan. Choices’ diamond purchases offer the player either extra scenes, particularly romantic or sexual, or outfits (see Figure 15.1). The main character’s situation therefore had to allow for the purchase of these kinds of scenes, and while outfits as a purchasing option were available to other female Roman characters,20 the need for sexual scenes would have been harder to balance.21
Thus, in Choices: A Courtesan of Rome Pixelberry Studies are working with a rather different set of player expectations and generic pressures than many of the games discussed in this volume. Choices games default to female, not male, for their main characters, and players expect a significant degree of positive representation and agency within the game.22 Furthermore, the financial model of the game means that character design and writing must allow for the kinds of purchasing options upon which the game relies financially; the app itself is free, so the financial motivators are rather different to those driving a major game with a significant up-front cost.23 Staff working on the games may be the same; Hepler herself worked at Bioware on the major games Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age 2 before leaving to work on mobile games. Yet, the different genre and format of the mobile game provides an environment in which the portrayal of women differs dramatically from the other games discussed in this volume.24 At the same time, as this chapter will discuss, this environment allows for extended discussion of female agency and power throughout the game, in a further contrast with games in other genres.
Figure 15.1 Purchasing outfits or additional scenes. Screenshot from Choices: A Courtesan of Rome.
Female agency in A Courtesan of Rome
The handling of agency in a game like Choices is a complicated balance. On the one hand, players expect to be able to make ‘meaningful’ choices, particularly given the advertisement text of the game.25 On the other, Choices’ story-driven quality and limited gameplay elements means that the player’s choices are necessarily circumscribed: the player cannot choose entirely to depart from the course of the narrative, so, in reality, the main choices are either personal rather than purely plot-related (which characters become close friends or romantic interests), or in some books choices may lead to a slightly different ending for the game.26 In the case of A Courtesan of Rome, there was a further potential limit to the exercise of agency in the game: Arin’s status as a courtesan, victim of Caesar’s conquests, and as a woman, which could have been a limiting factor in gameplay set in Ancient Rome.27
Arin’s legal status is somewhat ambiguous. It is clear that Arin has been enslaved as part of the conquest of Gaul; she is marched through Rome as part of a triumph in the opening scenes of the book, and she talks explicitly of her and her family’s enslavement with other characters.28 When Arin is brought to the schola, Lena has her unchained and agrees with Arin’s angry assertion that Arin ‘will not be [her] slave’,29 later Arin describes this explicitly as being given her freedom.30 However, some practical tie between Arin and the schola still seems to exist, as Cassius’ or Antony’s ability to ‘hire’ Arin is never in question, nor does it seem to be the case that Arin has any explicit control over her work in this regard; all arrangements for Arin to, for example, attend a performance at the theatre or attend a dinner party are made through Lena.31 Furthermore, in the final chapters of the game, Xanthe, Arin’s rival at the schola, is sent against her will as a ‘permanent courtesan’ to the governor of Sicily by Lena, suggesting a degree of control beyond simply employment, although she has apparently also been manumitted.
In many ways, the balance between the reality of objectification faced by many enslaved women in Republican Rome and the agency of the player is struck within the game optimistically in Arin’s favour. At the same time, agency is a persistent concern of the characters and the narrative of the game in a way which is highlighted throughout the player’s experience. In the first chapter of the game, which also serves as Arin’s ‘debut’, Lena reminds Arin upon introducing her to the assembled senators, ‘Remember, you need do nothing against your will.’ Similarly, in the flashback scene to Arin’s arrival, Lena can object to Arin’s comment about working with patrons, ‘I can guess how you expect me to “keep their interest” ’ with a denial: ‘I won’t ask you to do anything against your will, Arin.’32 This means that twice in the very first scenes of the book, as the player experiences them, the main character is reassured as to their right to consent to whatever will happen next.33 Nonetheless, Arin’s situation does leave her open to objectification by other characters, particularly some of the leading male characters. Strikingly, however, this objectification also becomes a point of comparison between the male characters in the game, and is often deployed as a method of criticism. Within the first chapter, Arin faces an encounter with ‘Senator Lucius’, who, while she is working at Cassius’ party, attempts to give her money in order to ‘sample the wares of Gaul’. Arin rejects Lucius, and the player can choose either to turn him down verbally or have Syphax physically restrain the senator, at which point the other attendees overhear the commotion caused. In either case, the objection is made on the basis that Arin is not Lucius’ ‘property’, since she is a ‘courtesan of Lena’s schola’. At this point, one of the game’s ‘checks’ is launched, particularly if Arin complains that Lucius’ treatment is degrading to her, Cassius, and Lena’s schola; if Arin’s Reputation has been made high enough by her behaviour at the party so far, then another senator in attendance, Cornelius, will complain that Lucius’ behaviour is ‘a terrible way to treat one of Lena’s finest courtesans’.34
Later in the game, there is a marked difference between the ways in which Arin is treated by Cassius and by Marc Antony, two of the four Love Interests and the only two Roman men. Cassius is keen to found his relationship with Arin on consent and mutual choice. In an early encounter, Cassius confesses, ‘It would mean everything to me if I thought you could care for me as a man and not just as a patron … After what Rome did to you … I never thought you would be with me by choice.’35 On the first opportunity for Cassius and Arin to consummate their relationship, Cassius waits for Arin to take the lead in their encounter, and explicitly asks Arin, ‘You are truly here of your own will? You wish this? You wish me, despite all that Rome has done to you?’36 In the same chapter Lena encourages Arin to pursue a relationship with Cassius on the basis that he truly cares for Arin, unlike some of her other potential patrons, and in Chapter 6 Cassius also notes his distaste for the traditional role of paterfamilias with the comment ‘How can you ever trust in the love of someone who fears what you can do to them?’
Antony, too, initially insists that he flirts with Arin in the hopes of gaining her independent interest, ‘If I wished only to buy you, my conversation would be with Lena. I was hoping perhaps to win something more.’37 In a later chapter, Lena congratulates Arin on being ‘the one thing in Rome which Antony wants but can’t have’, describing this as a freedom and power which Arin can use over Antony.38 Yet, in their first encounter, Antony describes Arin as ‘Lena’s merchandise,’39 and on multiple occasions in the following chapters Arin is described more as a possession of Antony’s than an independent women.40 Finally, when Arin bargains with Antony for the lives of her father and Syphax, who are fighting in the arena, Antony reveals a plan to send Arin to Caesar as a ‘tribute’ or ‘gift’ and an informant, claiming that he is troubled by Caesar’s closeness with Cleopatra.41 Arin’s responses to this plan vary, depending on the relationship which has been established with Antony by this stage of the game: if it is romantic, with their conversation following a seduction of Antony by Arin, then they can talk of this as a shared plan, and Antony expresses sorrow for the risk to Arin. If not, then Arin responds angrily: ‘You cannot “give me” to Caesar. I’m a free woman!’ Alarmingly, Antony then threatens Arin, ‘That could change,’ before declaring that there will be no ‘need’ for this ‘if you offer yourself willingly’. There is clear coercion here which undermines any sense of Arin’s being ‘willing’: Antony threatens Arin with enslavement and barters the lives of her father and Syphax in return for Arin’s agreement. Furthermore, since the game cannot proceed to the next chapters without Arin’s agreement, the player’s consent to this bargain is also effectively forced; Antony will refuse to offer an alternative option if Arin asks for one, and the game forces agreement to the deal in order to progress with the chapter.42 The player is presented with a potential choice, therefore, between a Love Interest in Cassius who fully respects and promotes Arin’s agency and consent, and Marc Antony, who will not always demonstrate the same concerns. In the presentation of this choice between the two Roman male Love Interests the player’s attention is explicitly drawn to the question of Arin’s agency and how it may be maintained.43
At other times, Arin’s status as a courtesan, despite the enslavement which has led to it, is explicitly discussed in the game as itself a source of freedom and agency, and, in particular, access to freedoms which otherwise women could not access.44 In her first scene with Lena, this freedom is promised as the results of becoming a courtesan: ‘It gives you freedom. More freedom than any woman in Rome. As a courtesan, you alone can go unescorted into the spaces where men decide our lives.’45 This idea is further emphasized in conversations with Sabina, the wife of a Roman legate, with Arin potentially describing her role as, ‘The most freedom a woman can have,’46 although the player does not have to adopt this view if another dialogue option is chosen (see Figure 15.2).
Arin also connects being a courtesan to freedom to move around the city in a way Sabina does not experience: ‘That is one of the freedoms of being a courtesan. We can travel when and where we want without a man’s permission.’47 Later in the game, once Arin has been reunited with her father and Syphax, and they are planning the murder of Aquila, Arin’s freedom of movement is again invoked and associated explicitly with her work as a courtesan: ‘This is what I have built my reputation for. You will never be able to go where the best courtesan in the city is allowed,’ a claim which Syphax immediately supports.48 In Arin’s case, becoming a courtesan is also repeatedly associated with power, a claim she makes explicitly to Aquila: ‘All you did by selling me to Lena was to turn me into the most powerful woman in Rome. I learned to write, and speak Latin, and to influence the leaders of the known world.’49 Arin’s father similarly describes her to Aquila as, ‘The one you sold as a slave, who now has more influence than you.’50
Figure 15.2 The freedom of a courtesan? Screenshot from Choices: A Courtesan of Rome.
The degree of influence Arin has been gathering as a courtesan is emphasized at key moments and connected to the gameplay through the Reputation dynamic. In A Courtesan of Rome, the Reputation/Wiles dynamic is one of the gameplay elements which players’ choices may affect. Choices in dialogue which involve Arin hiding her distaste for the Romans and responding politely to them, or emphasizing her popularity in Rome, gives points for her Reputation, while choices which are crafty or deceptive, particularly those that play on Arin’s seductive skills, give points for Wiles. Passing Reputation checks can help Arin sway those around her to her cause.51 Reputation and Wiles are also explicitly connected in dialogue to her relationship with Antony, since upon losing Antony’s favour in chapter 15, if the player has successfully built enough reputation, Lena will reassure Arin that since she is the ‘premier courtesan in all Rome’, Antony will recognize that she ‘begs for no man’s favour’. In the following chapters, Arin’s ability to pass a Wiles check will enable her romantic relationship with Antony to continue even if she has been simultaneously pursuing other Love Interests. These Wiles checks are a gameplay dynamic which reflect the association both by her and by other characters, particularly Syphax, with the courtesan’s ability to deceive, thus giving her the means to act against Caesar.52 The first lines of the game are Arin’s thought: ‘Smile, be charming, and never let them know that you all want them dead,’ thus immediately introducing this deceptive element. Her role in the assassination of Caesar will be to distract Antony and manipulate him into staying away from the Basilica, something Brutus describes as ‘a fair role for a woman like Arin to play’,53 thus explicitly recognizing the deceptive aspects of this role and their compatibility with her usual occupations. Syphax too connects his ability to ‘smile and deceive’54 with his long association with Lena and Arin. Arin’s role as a courtesan is also connected explicitly to the ability to survive, both in Arin’s conversations with her father, where they treat this as a role she had to perform in order to survive and reunite with her family, and then again in one of the game’s final scenes with Cassius, when Arin claims ‘Survival is a courtesan’s virtue. It requires no honor.’55
At the same time, the inclusion of Sabina’s experiences as a free Roman woman adds nuance to the game’s presentation of women’s agency in Republican Rome. Sabina’s view of the lives of women is explicitly raised in the penultimate chapter: ‘That’s what the world does … It throws chains on good women. And if they struggle, it eats them alive.’ The player’s first experience of Sabina immediately indicates her limited agency; she is introduced in chapter 1, when she comes to Cassius’ house, but expresses immediate discomfort at the party and leaves without even delivering a message. Similar discomfort is then expressed at a further party at Cassius’ house, when accompanying her husband to a popina, and through demonstration of her unwillingness to walk home alone in the evenings.56 Early discussions with Sabina frame this limited agency in terms of what is suitable for a woman of her status; she justifies her departure from the dinner party as a necessity, explaining to Arin, ‘I should not be unescorted when there are strange men inside.’57 In the later chapters, Arin and the player will find out that Sabina is in an abusive relationship; her husband limits her movements excessively due to jealousy, and in a scene at the market she expresses that even her options for shopping have been limited due to his fear of her catching the eye of another man while away from the house. She also reveals that she cannot divorce him, for fear of her father’s abuse.58 Sabina’s story thus far indicates some of the darker realities of the lives of Rome’s women. Her progression across A Courtesan of Rome, conversely, is one of slowly growing agency. Her exposure to Arin enables her to step physically into locations where she had previously not been comfortable (such as the Market, the docks, or outside Rome).59 The support that Sabina receives from Arin also finally emboldens her to stand up to her husband.60 Sabina’s agency is further connected to her contact with Locusta, a Gallic wise woman who supplies poisons and other drugs to Arin.61 Sabina’s initial contact with Locusta comes when she seeks contraception, as a way of preventing the extension of her husband’s reach over both her life and the life of a future innocent.62 By the end of the game, Sabina claims of Arin and Locusta that, ‘Because of the two of you, I’m … finally not scared,’ and she will take over from Locusta in running the apothecary once her husband is either dead or exiled.
Sabina’s growing agency also demonstrates a persistent pattern in the portrayal of women across A Courtesan of Rome. On multiple occasions, it is women’s bonds with women which provide the most significant support and agency to women. Lena’s manumission of Arin, and her promise that Arin (and by extension the player) should not act against her own will are key in establishing the extent of Arin’s agency early, and give her the ability to object to Lucius’ behaviour in the first chapters of the book.63 Arin’s association with Locusta provides her with a means to vengeance, practically through the poisons she supplies, as well as advice and support from another female figure.64 Arin’s skills with poisons, and her faith or ritual knowledge if the player chooses to pursue these, are also connected to her learning from her mother. It is Sabina’s entry into the female-oriented space of Locusta’s shop which enables her to fully connect with Arin; at their prior meeting in Cassius’ house their conversation is much briefer. Later on, Sabina is found learning from Locusta, who describes her knowledge something she has ‘only taught to women’,65 and when Sabina takes on Locusta’s role she describes her aims as helping other girls and women in ‘difficult situations’, particularly those suffering at the hands of their fathers or husbands.66 Similarly, Lena warns both Arin and Xanthe about the risk to them of trusting their safety to men, in their position.67 Arin’s mother, Delphinia, similarly benefits from the networks of women she establishes, most notably, in the group of young female initiates to the cult of Isis who she teaches, and who then help to free her from an unkind (and impious) priestess in the temple in Macedon where she is enslaved, and travel with her to Egypt in support of her vision quest.68 In this regard, A Courtesan of Rome again presents a strong contrast with many games and other modern media, particularly those with a historical setting, where when female characters do exist, they are often surrounded by male characters, so that it is rare to see positive female networks and communications established.69
It is, of course, not exclusively the case that agency in A Courtesan of Rome is achieved through female action and networks. While these networks are repeatedly positive for both the main character and the other female characters in the game, it is the male characters, particularly Cassius and Antony, whose involvement with the main character are most significant for advancing the plot. Furthermore, in chapter seven, the additional outfit for purchase is a soldier’s armour, allowing Arin to disguise herself as a man to enter the senate basilica and listen to the meeting about Caesar’s impending return to Rome. Without this disguise, that is, if Arin remains as a woman, she cannot access this meeting and must listen from outside. As a result, some of the limits of Arin’s agency are inscribed specifically by her gender (if not the player’s agency, which is limited only by their willingness to spend the in-game currency on the outfit and associated scene).
Furthermore, there are some significant examples of negative female-female relationships represented in the game, in the forms of Xanthe, Arin’s fellow courtesan, Cleopatra, and the priestess whom Delphinia struggles against for control of a temple of Ceres. Xanthe in particular is presented as a rival of Arin’s from the early scenes of the game. She is jealous of Arin’s success, particularly given her own extensive training,70 and unsympathetic towards Arin’s past experiences.71 She also actively works against Arin on multiple occasions, by attempting to seduce Cassius away from his interest in Arin, by spreading rumours about Syphax and Arin, and finally by claiming to Antony that Arin and Cassius have ‘plotting against Caesar’ (ironically, before the actual plotting takes place), which causes Antony to become angry with Arin, and to dismiss her in favour of Xanthe. Xanthe’s exile results from her intention to betray Arin and Cassius once more, this time to Caesar himself. Xanthe’s spite and jealousy are often revealed as shallow and self-serving.72 However, in many ways, this diversity of female experience and characterization is itself a positive factor: by increasing the number of female characters in the game, A Courtesan of Rome manages to represent the good and the bad (although rarely the ugly, given the genre) and have women playing a wide variety of roles throughout the narrative.73
This chapter has only scratched the surface of Choices: A Courtesan of Rome’s interactions with history and cultural ideas about its Roman context. However, in doing so, it demonstrates the importance of considering mobile games among other types of video game when we look at the reception of the Classical World. Given the large audiences for this kind of game, they can be a key factor in how players are discovering and interpreting the ancient world. At the same time, as this chapter has shown, their player and developer expectations, as well as the genres of game produced, can lead to a vastly different model for the representation of women in the games compared to those ‘core’ console or PC games more commonly considered in this kind of discussion. A Courtesan of Rome is not necessarily (nor does it purport to be) a feminist account, but by highlighting women’s lives, relationships and behaviours, including a female protagonist, and by explicitly raising questions of women’s agency and power, it provides a degree of engagement with the lives and experiences of women which is rarely seen among video games set in the ancient world.
Notes
1.Kaplan (2019).
2.See Willson and Leaver (2016: esp. 1–4); and on the difficulties of mapping some of these new audiences onto the label of ‘gamer’, see Shaw and Chess (2016: 283–5).
3.See, for example, Rollinger (2020a: 22) – no chapter in Rollinger (2020c) covers a mobile game. Similarly, while Clare (2021) does consider the visual novel (141–56), he does not examine examples of mobile games. A distinction (often unhelpful) between casual and ‘hardcore’ games which excludes or separates out casual games, including mobile games, is common in academic writing on games more generally and in games journalism – see further Chess and Paul (2019), and for the construction of the distinction in the games industry as a whole, Cote (2020: 23–55).
4.It is one of several ‘narrative’ games which have become popular as a genre of mobile game since 2018 – see Suckley (2018).
5.Lien (2014).
6.‘About’, https://www.pixelberrystudios.com/about (29 May 2021). In 2020, as a response to the events of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in America, and player comments they were receiving, Oliver Miao, the founder and CEO of Pixelberry released a statement reiterating the studio’s commitment to diversity of representation across the books and hiring practice, and desire to improve their work in this area further – see: https://www.pixelberrystudios.com/blog/2020/6/15/representation-at-pixelberry (29 May 2021). In 2021, Choices also featured a story about climate change, inspired by Greta Thunberg, at: https://www.pixelberrystudios.com/blog/2020/10/27/rising-tides (29 May 2021), as part of the UN Playing for the Planet initiative: https://playing4theplanet.org/pixelberry-studios/ (29 May 2021). Pixelberry Studios are not the only company demonstrating this kind of awareness: a recent collection described the increase in socially engaged games as ‘video game culture … finally starting to grow up’ (Goldberg and Larsson 2015: 8–10).
7.Chess (2020: 95–100).
8.I am very grateful to Jennifer Hepler, the lead writer of A Courtesan of Rome, for agreeing to talk to me about the processes behind the game development and writing while I was working on this chapter (2021).
9.This was partly the result of Hepler leaving the company, and the game being given a compressed one-volume release instead of the original plan for two volumes (Hepler, personal Interview, March 2021.)
10.Choices: A Courtesan of Rome (2018).
11.At the time of writing, 70 of the 110 available books for Choices are ‘gender-locked’ with the main character as female – 40 allow the player to choose a gender, and none are locked to a male main character.
12.The default name for the player character, the ‘courtesan’ of the title, if the player does not provide their own preferred name, is ‘Arin’ of the Catauni (the tribe’s name is also customizable).
13.Hepler, personal interview, March 2021. Hepler also felt that it was very important that the story be specific to a female main character, particularly as regards the uniqueness of agency available to Arin in comparison to other women; if the player could also choose a male prostitute, the status and situation of the main character would not match the story which the writers wished to tell. As Wohn (2011) has shown, the use of a female protagonist is much more common in casual games than in ‘hardcore’ games.
14.Hepler, personal interview, March 2021. In planning this story arc, Hepler was influenced by the Boudica novels by Manda Scott; she also cited HBO’s Rome (2005–7), thus reflecting the ways in which video games often present a view of the ancient world mediated through other receptions (see further Lowe 2009: 68–71).
15.Chapter 17. Lena’s name is a reference to the role of the lena or ‘procuress’ in ancient Rome. Her (briefly mentioned) connection with Sulla reflects the narratives of prostitutes (such as Praecia) involved in politics at the time of Sulla, although these are generally arrayed against the dictator rather than with him. See further on these narratives Rauh (2011: 198–200).
16.This is not an inaccurate representation of the potential influence of a successful courtesan; Strong (2016: 64) describes them as having ‘potentially more indirect power than any other non-elite woman in Roman society’.
17.See Tuplin in this volume. Hepler commented to me that this was not a model of power which Pixelberry makes use of in its books with a modern setting, so this image of female power through deception and manipulation was one particularly connected in her view to the historical context (Helper, personal interview, March 2021).
18.The others are Arin’s bodyguard, Syphax and Sabina, the wife of the legate who enslaved Arin.
19.Cicero Att. 10.10.5 and more vituperatively Philippics 2.58–61. For more on Cytheris, see Keith (2011). Antony himself was accused by Cicero of prostitution in the Philippics: 2.44–5. Cytheris is also reported to have had an association with Marcus Brutus (Vir. Ill. 82.2), which may have been a further inspiration given Arin’s association with the assassins of Caesar in A Courtesan of Rome.
20.Given that prostitutes seem to have been marked in Roman society by their elaborate clothing (Edwards 1993: 81), they are particularly suited to this kind of outfit purchasing mechanic. Married women, by contrast, are reminded not to adorn themselves too fully or risk seeming available for adultery in Seneca’s Controversiae 2.7.3–4.
21.Hepler, personal interview, March 2021.
22.A contrast here is presented with Ubisoft’s approach to Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, an AAA game released in the same year and also set in the ancient world – a female-only main character was originally proposed, but the developers were told that this would not be an option, due to an attitude that female protagonists ‘would not sell’ (Schreier 2020).
23.On the changes to the gaming industry and development that have occurred due to the rise of mobile and casual gaming and their financial models, Willson and Leaver (2016) is a particularly useful collection, see also Cote (2020: 42–5).
24.Significantly, Hepler cited the desire to work on different types of games with different player expectations as being behind the move, with a view to avoiding the ‘male power fantasy’ of major commercial games (quoted in Crecente (2016)). Hepler’s departure from Bioware was also connected by many to the pattern of cases of serious harassment of women working in the video game industry, for which see Sarkeesian and Cross (2015: 110–11, 120–1).
25.The Google Play Store ‘About this game’ text for Choices (28 May 2021) reads: ‘Fall in love or go on adventures in stories where YOU control what happens!’
26.This is a common issue of writing for video games more generally – see further Bateman (2021: 91–3). In A Courtesan of Rome, the main character is always successfully involved in the assassination of Caesar, but her choices have an impact on whether she reunites with her whole family, which romantic interest she ends the game with, and therefore which life she will pursue beyond the game, although the player does not have the opportunity to experience any of her potential future fates.
27.The setting raises other issues for the Pixelberry team as regards player experience: the book is preceded with the warning that the game ‘takes place in a historical time period with very different views on violence, slavery, mistreatment of women, and animal sacrifice. These and other mature themes will be explored. Player discretion is advised.’ Furthermore, multiple chapters are preceded with a more specific content note warning the player that the material to follow is potentially distressing, particularly before scenes detailing Sabina’s experiences of abuse and child marriage, and threatened or attempted sexual assault on Arin.
28.Chapter 1. Keith (2011: esp. 30–2) demonstrates effectively how many of the literary narratives and real figures of ‘courtesans’ in Late Republican Rome were influenced by the imperial conquests of Rome and the influx of enslaved or freed women into Roman society through these, although these are more usually from the Greek world rather than Gaul, as is Arin.
29.Chapter 1.
30.Chapter 20.
31.There is a potential contrast here with the independent agency in actuality of a meretrix to establish her own contracts, and the usual lack of a lena or leno in the arrangements made by these women – see further James (2006: 227). The free meretrices of Roman comedy do occasionally work under a lena (as in Asinaria, Cistellaria and Miles Gloriosus), although more commonly the presence of a leno/lena is the result of a woman’s enslavement. There is, of course, a practical gameplay element to this way of framing Arin’s work, as it limits the amount of ‘setting up’ of this kind of event needed by the main character – chapters begin with an indication of where Arin will be going, relayed by Lena, and the chapter itself is focused on the outing.
32.Chapter 1.
33.Hepler told me that this discussion of agency was essential, as the player, as well as Arin, needed to know that despite playing as a prostitute they did not have to do anything they did not want to, particularly as regards sexual content within the game (Helper, personal interview, March 2021).
34.These gameplay checks are discussed in more detail below. The player also sees an overhead text which explains, ‘Your good reputation helped protect you from Senator Lucius’ anger.’
35.Chapter 5.
36.Chapter 9.
37.Chapter 4.
38.Chapter 17. In this regard, Arin’s status as a woman beyond male control, and the anxiety this may generate for the men involved, reflects some of the attitudes found in Roman texts featuring courtesans, such as Plautus Asinaria and Ovid Amores 1.4 and 2.5 – see further on this topic James (2006: esp. 228), where she describes the courtesan as ‘the one woman an elite Roman male needed to persuade’, and Strong (2016: 33–4).
39.Chapter 2.
40.In chapter 13, Legate Aquila describes Arin as ‘Antony’s courtesan’ (a label she rejects, primarily dismayed that he does not remember enslaving her himself: ‘Is that all I am to you?’), before Antony uses the same description in confrontation with Aquila: ‘A man of your stature, trying to steal my courtesan’ (chapter 14).
41.Chapter 17. The giving of courtesans as ‘gifts’ to cement political alliances does seem to have happened in the Late Republic, and to have been the situation for Pompeius’ mistress, Flora, who was ‘bartered’ to his friend Geminus (Plutarch Pompeius 2.8), and Praecia, who was used to connect Lucius Licinius Lucullus and Cethegus (Plutarch Lucullus 6.2), see further Strong (2016: 69–72).
42.The vulnerability of Arin here, despite the free status which she insists on, reflects accurately the legal position of Roman prostitutes, who, even if they were free Roman citizens (which Arin of course is not), were at risk of penalties in law which could not apply to other Roman citizens, and which assimilated them in many ways to the legal status of enslaved people – see further Edwards (1997: esp. 76–7).
43.Syphax and Sabina have a stance much closer to Cassius’, but neither is in the same kind of situation of power over Arin as Cassius, who is Arin’s patron.
44.In this regard, the portrayal of the Roman courtesan is likely to be closer to some of the glamorized fictional narratives of meretrices in Rome than the reality of many sex workers. See further Strong (2016: 14–15).
45.The interactions with men Lena indicates here, i.e. the ‘ability to move freely among important historical people’ was particularly important for the writers in deciding to make her a courtesan, according to Hepler (personal interview, March 2021).
46.Chapter 5.
47.Chapter 5. Over the course of the game, this freedom takes the form of Arin attending games, the theatre, the market place, religious ceremonies and celebrations, dinner parties, a popina, and travelling freely or with a patron around the city at all times of the day. Many of these activities do map on to the activities of the Roman courtesan: for full textual support, see James (2018: 105).
48.Chapter 15.
49.For the importance of literacy to the ‘courtesans’ in Arin’s situation in both Rome and Greece, see Hallett (2011: 191–2); and on their unusual degree of education Eyben (1993: 238).
50.Chapter 16.
51.This dynamic reflects the important conceptualization of a meretrix’s work in Rome as being public – for the frequent descriptions even of ‘good’ prostitutes as well known, see Strong (2016: 55).
52.This capacity for deceit is seen as a common feature of courtesans in Roman elegy, see for example Amores 1.4 and, 2.5, Tibullus 1.6, and see further James (2006: 240–1), and similarly on the trope of the lying meretrix in Roman comedy Duncan (2006: esp. 257). It reaches its pinnacle in Plautus’ Truculentus, in which the main character, Phronesium, is demonstrated using her ‘wiles’ to trick an enormous amount of money from her lovers: for the stereotype of ‘bad courtesan’ in this play, see Fantham (2011).
53.Chapter 20.
54.Chapter 15.
55.Chapter 21.
56.Chapters 5 and 12.
57.A Courtesan of Rome, chapter 1. The presence of courtesans at dinner parties is seen throughout Roman literature, particularly, but not exclusively, comedy and elegy (see, for example, Plautus Asinaria, Terence Eunuchus, and Heauton Timoroumenos Tibullus 1.6 and Ovid Amores 1.4, 2.5). Cicero met Cytheris unexpectedly at a dinner party (Fam. 9.26.1–2), although his objection to her presence in that letter suggests some limitations did exist on a courtesan’s ability to move in elite male company, even if these were primarily connected to individual scruples.
58.Chapter 7.
59.Chapters 7, 12 and 14. This happens whether or not Sabina and Arin enter into a romantic relationship.
60.Chapter 14.
61.Locusta’s role as a poisoner suggests her character was inspired by the historical figure of the same name, for whom see Tacitus (Annals 12.66, 13.15), Suetonius (Life of Nero, 33, 47) and Cassius Dio (61.34 and 63.3)
62.Chapter 4.
63.In the final chapter, Arin will sum up the significance of this relationship, ‘When you bought me, I thought you would be my enemy. But you gave me freedom and have been the greatest ally I could have.’
64.Hepler described this model for Arin as providing her with ‘three mothers’ (Delphinia, Lena and Locusta), which were an important inclusion for her (Hepler, personal interview, March 2021).
65.Chapter 4.
66.Chapter 20.
67.Chapter 3.
68.Delphinia’s and Arin’s connections with Isis again accurately reflect an aspect of the literary and historical tradition of the popularity of the cult with Roman ‘outsiders’, including prostitutes, for which see Strong (2016: 191–2).
69.As Wainwright (2019: 170–2) has discussed with reference to the Bechdel test. Keith (2018a: 83–4) has demonstrated that networks of women form an important part of some of the historical narratives of Roman courtesans, making A Courtesan of Rome’s setting particularly suitable to this positive change. See also Tuplin in this volume on the community of sex workers in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey.
70.In chapter 3, she complains, ‘I couldn’t believe Lena saw anything in you … I have been training in grace and beauty since I was a little girl!’
71.In chapter 12, a combination of dialogue options can lead to Xanthe asking dismissively and unsympathetically, ‘Is this where you talk about how you were enslaved?’
72.E.g. chapter 15.
73.On the importance of diversity as an aspect of representation see, Shaw (2015: 163–5, 219–25) and Cote (2020: 60–9, 92–3).