A historian’s breakdown of the lovely historical details in Honkai: Star Rail 3.0

Originally published on January 13, 2025.

In the distant past, this humble writer wanted to become a historian. Intrigued by ancient history from a young age, he went on to study it at university and get a degree, only to then end up here – not an unhappy ending by any means. Still, I’m overjoyed whenever I get to nerd out about my old and ongoing love, so I’m grateful to HoYoverse for providing me with the perfect pretext.

Honkai: Star Rail 3.0 largely takes place on Amphoreus, a planet inspired by Greek and Roman civilization, history, culture, and mythology. Wherever you look when exploring this planet, there’s something cool to spot, some easter egg to giggle over – and there’s something for every level of knowledge here. Everyone can connect a bug rolling a boulder up a giant staircase with poor old Sisyphus or see the Steed of Janus, a wonky wooden horse some kid is using as a merchant stall, and be reminded of the Trojan Horse and crack a smile.

Let’s take the city-state of Okhema as an example. It has this wonderful, bustling marketplace that evokes the feeling of a Roman forum or a Greek agora. These were the centers of cities, places where citizens would come to trade, hear the juicy gossip of the day, and listen to the speeches made by politicians. They played a central role in a town’s public life and must have been busy, vibrant places.

Okhema’s market has that same wonderful multi-purpose vibe. We have different vendors and food stalls, groups of people gossiping or engaging in philosophical discussions, and there are orators demanding attention. One of them is aptly named Cicero, after one of – if not the – the greatest speakers Rome has ever produced.

In general, the aesthetics of the city and its population are more Greek than Roman, though, with some exceptions. Take the helmets worn by Okhema’s soldiers, which anyone will immediately associate with something – one type is famously associated with Sparta, thanks to movies like 300, and the other is pretty much synonymous with Roman gladiators.

That 300-esque helmet is called a Corinthian Helmet, which – funnily enough – probably wasn’t widely used anymore by the time the famous Battle of Thermopylae happened. As you can imagine, the Corinthian Helmet restricted visibility and hearing quite a lot, so it fell out of favor. Then why is it still so iconic, you ask? Well, the Greeks basically viewed it as a romantic symbol of their past glories, so many pieces of art like statues continued to be produced with Corinthian Helmets being depicted, even though it long passed its zenith. Then the Romans, being the Greeks’ greatest fanboys, came along and copied those statues, continuing the tradition.

The other helmet is the Boeotian Helmet – so another Greek original. Cavalry from Greece and Rome favored this type of helmet, though its long-lasting fame is mainly owed to another wearer, a Roman gladiator type called murmillo. The Romans added the iconic face plate to the helmet, a move probably equally motivated by the rule of cool and an effort to “balance” match-ups. Any StarCraft fan worth their salt will confirm for you that Terran versus Zerg is the best match-up. Well, for many Romans murmillo versus retiarius was the best gladiator pairing. The retiarius is the half-naked guy with the trident and the net and the murmillo’s faceplate was necessary to prevent the retiarius from simply stabbing his opponent in the face and ending the fight quickly – the audience wouldn’t have appreciated that very much. 

The army never used the helmet in this configuration, which is why its lasting popularity is so funny: Some cool helmet type the Romans cobbled together for sport is still one of the coolest helmet types in our eyes today, so we continue to use it in media and art.

Continuing on our way across the market, we come upon a basket – and because we are the Trailblazer, we want to rummage through it. Turns out that Diogena, the town’s weirdo (that’s literally her title in the game), lives inside the basket and tells us to leave her alone. Huh, that sounds familiar, right?

Many walls in Okhema sport lion’s heads and you can actually talk to these stone constructs, which belong to a, I don’t know, hive consciousness(?) called Verax Leo. Whatever it is, Verax Leo is an unrepentant gossip, purveyor of sophistry, and lover of riddles. Yeah, it’s basically HoYoverse’s take on a sphinx. 

One of the funniest riddles it gives you makes reference to the absolute shambles of a calendar most ancient Greek and Roman cities had before Caesar came long to reform the system into the Julian Calendar. Some days were deemed religiously impure or unlucky, so there could be no business done, and priests could simply declare those days willy-nilly to sabotage elections and whatnot. Rome’s chief priest also had to manually slot additional days into the calendar each year to keep it from going out of sync with the seasons – so when Caesar, the chief priest, was away in Gaul for many years and neglected this particular duty of his office, the calendar drifted by two or three months with ‘October’ still being the height of summer.

Speaking of Caesar, one of the things he’s known for today is becoming Rome’s dictator. Before becoming a byword for tyranny and authoritarian rule, the office of dictator was actually kind of a regular thing in Rome (well, not by Caesar’s time). When the Republic faced a great danger – like Hannibal stomping through Italy – the senate would elect one of its members to become dictator for a set period of six months, giving him supreme command over the state to fight the crisis effectively. There are even examples where a dictator was elected just for a couple of days to organize the next elections when the consuls, whose job that usually was, were out of town. It seems like the council of Okhema had a similar idea by temporarily ceding control of the city to the Chrysos Heirs, who seem happy to leave this matter to Aglaea – and that’s why some council members seem to be so hostile towards her. Let’s hope that Aglaea will not follow Caesar’s footsteps on the Ides of March.

Before I’m overstaying my welcome, let’s move from the marketplace to the baths for the final details I want to highlight. The Romans loved baths. Whichever region Rome conquered, you can bet that one of the first things they did was to build baths, with examples ranging from Britain and Germany to North Africa. I was a bit afraid that HoYoverse would take the easy way out and let itself be inspired by Japanese bathing culture, as Asian developers usually do (and I get why – onsens are great), so imagine my positive surprise when I checked out Okhema’s baths.

Obviously, it’s not a one-to-one replica of any Roman bath complex, but the general structure with a central pool, adjacent chambers with additional pools around it, and then various other rooms and outside areas at the edges is very authentic. Not only that – Okhema’s baths have warm as well as cold pools, mirroring the Romans’ caldarium (hot bath) and frigidarium (cold bath), which is pretty cool.

I mentioned that marketplaces were pretty multi-purpose in these ancient cities, and the same goes for baths. See, a Roman bath usually was much more than just a place to take a dip and clean off the dust of the day’s work. Baths had spaces to get massages, practice sports, take walks in the shade of greenery, and enjoy artworks that were publicly displayed. Libraries being attached to baths was fairly common, so you could go read a scroll or listen to debates. These were full-on entertainment and culture complexes – and Okhema’s baths perfectly reflect that. There is a library in the southern wing and a sacred grove in the uppermost area, for example, while there are some cushy areas outside to rest and relax.

Someone at HoYoverse looked at blueprints and did some solid research to create this really authentic complex and I love that. I can feel your attention slipping, so I won’t talk about the Delphi-esque religious complex that is Janusopolis or the myriad of other little details that you can find in Okhema, but I hope this has been an enjoyable read and educational historical tour through the city for you.