Book excerpt: Introduction / Jane Draycott and Kate Cook -- Playable girls in ancient worlds : Athena (1986) opens the door / Dunstan Lowe -- A historical overview of women in ancient-period video games / Jordy Orellana Figueroa -- Dangerous defaults : demographics and identities within and without video games / Marcie Persyn -- The maiden, the mother and the monster : the monstrous-feminine in historical and archaeological video games / Dan Goad -- Bringing down the divine patriarchy through Deicide in Apotheon (2015) / Amy Norgard -- Argonautic women? : gender and heroic status in Rise of the Argonauts / Sophie Ngan -- Good riddance : refiguring Eurydice in Supergiant's Hades / Kira Jones -- Reception and representation of Greco-Roman goddesses in Smite : battleground of the gods / Katherine Beydler -- Aphrodite, a caricature of female sexuality / Olivia Kinsman -- Violence against women in classical video games / Hannah-Marie Chidwick -- Playing Cleopatra in Assassin's Creed Origins / Jane Draycott -- Playing Salammbô? : orientalism, gender and gaming with the Punic world / Andrew Dufton -- Kassandra's odyssey / Richard Cole -- "We do what we must to survive" : prostitution and power in Assassin's creed odyssey / Roz Tuplin -- "It's the most freedom a woman can have" : gender, genre and agency in choices : a courtesan of Rome / Kate Cook.