Athens is full of people who think and argue and construct positions on the good and the true. Socrates, Hippocrates, Herodotos — the game peoples its Athens with historical figures who represent the Greek philosophical tradition at its most articulate. Kassandra moves through their conversations with the patient tolerance of someone who respects the project and cannot afford to participate in it. The mercenary's relationship to philosophy is instrumental: she will take what is useful and continue.

Surviving is not the opposite of thinking. It is what makes continued thinking possible. The philosophers are alive and arguing because the world they are arguing in is stable enough for argument. The mercenaries who maintain that stability are the material condition the philosophy requires and declines to acknowledge.