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The following is a list of historical figures in Civilization V. They are randomly born as "Great People" outside of the player's cities. Links to Wikipedia (or other appropriate resources) are provided here; click on one of these names to view more information on the respective historical figure.
Great Generals
- Ahuitzotl
- Akbar
- Arminius
- Belisarius
- Cao Cao
- Chandragupta Maurya
- Hernan Cortez
- Oliver Cromwell
- El Cid
- Epaminondas
- Eugene of Savoy
- Gaius Marius
- Geronimo
- Heinz Guderian
- Hamilcar Barca
- Hannibal Barca
- Ivan the Terrible
- Jeanne d'Arc
- Khaled ibn al-Walid
- Robert E. Lee
- Leonidas
- Lysander
- Charles Martel
- Maurice of Nassau
- Bernard Montgomery
- George Patton
- Francisco Pizzaro
- Pompey
- Pyrrhus
- Erwin Rommel
- Sargon
- Scipio Africanus
- Winfield Scott
- Sitting Bull
- William Slim
- Spartacus
- Subutai
- Sun Tzu
- Timur
- Johann Tserclaes
- Vercingetorix
- Albrecht von Wallenstein
- William the Conqueror
- Zhuge Liang
- Georgy Zhukov
Great Admirals (Great Generals or Great Merchants in vanilla)
- Afonso de Albuquerque
- Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa
- Álvaro de Bazán
- Calonymus of Alexandria
- Jacques Cartier
- Christopher Columbus
- James Cook
- Andrew Cunningham
- Michiel de Ruyter
- George Dewey
- Don John of Austria
- Andrea Doria
- John Doukas
- Francis Drake
- Leif Ericson
- Erik the Red
- David Farragut
- Vasco da Gama
- Comte de Grasse
- Hanno
- Hayreddin Barbarossa
- Henry the Navigator
- Himilco
- John Paul Jones
- Ferdinand Magellan
- Horatio Nelson
- Chester Nimitz
- Matthew Perry
- Murat Reis
- Phormio
- Pytheas
- Marcus Atilius Regulus
- Roger of Lauria
- Zinovy Rozhestvensky
- Shi Lang
- Alfred von Tirpitz
- Togo Heihachiro
- Turgut Reis
- Fyodor Ushakov
- Fernando Villaamil
- Peter Wessel Tordenskjold
- Isoroku Yamamoto
- Yi Sun-sin
- Zheng He
Great Artists
Lawrence Alma-Tameda
- Antonello da Messina
- Giuseppe Arcimboldo
- Kamaleddin Behzad
- Giovanni Bellini
- József Borsos
- Sandro Botticelli
- William-Adolphe Bouguereau
- Pieter Brueghel the Elder
- Pieter Brueghel the Younger
- Karl Bryullov
- Gustave Caillebotte
- Caravaggio
- Adrien Carpentiers
- Mary Cassatt
- Paul Cézanne
- Petrus Christus
- Jean Clouet
- Jacques-Louis David
- Edgar Degas
- Eugène Delacroix
- Paul Delaroche
- Asher Durand
- El Greco
- Jan van Eyck
- Jean Fouquet
- Jean-Honoré Fragonard
- Caspar David Friedrich
- Thomas Gainsborough
- Paul Gauguin
- Vincent van Gogh
- George Gower
- Giotto di Bondone
- Francisco Goya
- August Haake
- Francesco Hayez
- Martin Johnson Heade
- George Healy
- Hiranand
- Hans Holbein the Younger
- Winslow Homer
- Huang Gongwang
- Sergey Ivanov
- Jiao Bingzhen
- Kano Masanobu
- Torajiro Kasai
- Katsushika Hokusai
- Bahram Kirmanshahi
- Gustav Klimt
- Edmund Leighton
- Emanuel Leutze
- Édouard Manet
- Bernardo Martorell
- Michelangelo
- Amedeo Modigliani
- Claude Monet
- Samuel Morse
- Alphonse de Neuville
- Pablo Picasso
- Frans Post
- Qian Xuan
- Qiu Ying
- Raja Ravi Varma
- Raphael
- Frederic Remington
- Pierre-Auguste Renoir
- Ilya Repin
- Rembrant van Rijn
- Henri Rousseau
- Peter Paul Rubens
- George Seurat
- William Simpson
- Bartholomeus Spranger
- Gilbert Stuart
- Sultan Muhammad
- Tintoretto
- Titian
- Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
- Paolo Uccello
- Utagawa Hiroshige
- Utagawa Kuniyoshi
- Toyokuni Utagawa
- Viktor Vasnetsov
- Willem van de Velde the Younger
- Johannes Vermeer
- Horace Vernet
- Leonardo da Vinci
- Wang Ximeng
- James Abbott McNeill Whistler
- Grant DeVolson Wood
- Yan Liben
- Yanagawa Shigenobu
- Zhang Zeduan
- Francisco de Zurbarán
Great Writers (Great Artists in vanilla and G&K)
- Aesop
- Vittorio Alfieri
- Dante Alighieri
- Ludovico Ariosto
- Aristophanes
- Jane Austen
- Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube
- Bhāsa
- L. Frank Baum
- Harriet Beecher Stowe
- Cao Xueqin
- Lewis Carroll
- Miguel de Cervantes
- Geoffrey Chaucer
- Anton Chekhov
- Chikamatsu Monzaemon
- James Fenimore Cooper
- Stephen Crane
- Rubén Darío
- Charles Dickens
- Emily Dickenson
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- Alexandre Dumas
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Nikolay Gogol
- Maksim Gorky
- Nathaniel Hawthorne
- José Hernández
- Homer
- Victor Hugo
- Washington Irving
- Jorge Isaacs
- Kālidāsa
- Omar Khayyám
- Ki no Tsurayuki
- Rudyard Kipling
- Langling Xiaoxiao Sheng
- D. H. Lawrence
- Lucian of Samosata
- Thomas Mallory
- Herman Melville
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Natsume Soseki
- Ovid
- Petrarch
- Edgar Allen Poe
- Marcel Proust
- Qu Yuan
- François Rabelais
- Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Johann Friedrich von Schiller
- William Shakespeare
- Mary Shelley
- Shi Naian
- Sophocles
- Edmund Spencer
- Henry David Thoreau
- Leo Tolstoy
- Mark Twain
- Ueda Akinari
- Valmiki
- Jules Verne
- Virgil
- Voltaire
- Vyasa
- H. G. Wells
- Walt Whitman
- Yoshida Kenkō
Great Musicians (Great Artists in vanilla and G&K)
- John Adams
- Al-Kindi
- Alla Rakha
- Johann Sebastian Bach
- Louis Ballard
- Ludwig van Beethoven
- Prince Benbadhanabongse
- Alban Berg
- David Blanasi
- Johannes Brahms
- Benjamin Britten
- Prince Buster
- William Byrd
- John Cage
- Carlos Chávez
- Frédéric Chopin
- Sayed Darwish
- Claude Debussy
- Guillaume Dufay
- Antonín Dvořák
- Duke Ellington
- Enheduanna
- Ulvi Cemal Erkin
- Gaspar Fernandes
- Giovanni Gabrieli
- George Gershwin
- Carlo Gesualdo
- Guido d'Arezzo
- George Handel
- Franz Josef Haydn
- Gustav Holst
- Charles Ives
- Ji Kang
- Orlande de Lassus
- Solomon Linda
- Ferenc Liszt
- Emerico Lobo de Mesquita
- Gustav Mahler
- Guillaume de Machaut
- Meerabai
- Mesomedes
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
- Modest Mussorgsky
- R. Carlos Nakai
- Jacob Obrecht
- Johannes Ockeghem
- Niccolò Paganini
- Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
- Hanna Petros
- Josquin des Prez
- Maurice Ravel
- Steve Reich
- Silvestre Revueltas
- Camille Saint Saëns
- Esteban Salas y Castro
- Erik Satie
- Manuel Saumell
- Francisco Manuel da Silva
- Johann Strauss II
- Richard Strauss
- Thomas Tallis
- Taizan Higuchi
- Pyotr Tchaikovsky
- Giuseppe Verdi
- Richard Wagner
- Wasitodiningrat
- Hugo Wolf
- Yamada Kengyo
- Yatsuhashi Kengyo
- Ziryab
Great Merchants
- Aretas III
- Andrew Carnegie
- Coco Chanel
- Marcus Licinius Crassus
- Anthony van Diemen
- Jakob Fugger
- Harkuf
- Edward Harriman
- Milton S. Hershey
- Ibn Battuta
- Steve Jobs
- John Maynard Keynes
- Sir James Lancaster
- Sir Alexander Mackenzie
- Giovanni de Medici
- John Stuart Mill
- Henri Nestlé
- John D. Rockefeller
- Sir Thomas Roe
- Shah Jahan
- Adam Smith
- Levi Strauss
- Raja Todar Mal
- Thomas Twining
- Cornelius Vanderbilt
- Richard Whittington
- Wang Anshi
- Zhang Qian
Great Engineers
- Archimedes
- Alexander Graham Bell
- Isambard Kingdom Brunel
- Karl Benz
- Henry Bessemer
- Bi Sheng
- Cai Lun
- Charles Augustin de Coulomb
- Louis Daguerre
- Gottlieb Daimler
- Charles Stark Draper
- George Eastman
- Thomas Edison
- Alexandre Gustave Eiffel
- Henry Ford
- Benjamin Franklin
- Robert Goddard
- George Washington Goethals
- Heron
- Imhotep
- Joseph Marie Jacquard
- Ferdinand de Lesseps
- Guglielmo Marconi
- William Morton
- Nikolaus August Otto
- Blaise Pascal
- Norbert Rillieux
- John Roebling
- Wilhelm Schickard
- Mimar Sinan
- Nain Singh
- Nikola Tesla
- James Watt
- Orville Wright
- Wilbur Wright
- Zhang Heng
Great Scientists
- Al-Khwarizmi
- Al-Razi
- Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi
- Alhazen
- Aristotle
- Aryabhata
- Francis Bacon
- Tycho Brahe
- Niels Bohr
- Nicolaus Copernicus
- Marie Curie
- John Dalton
- Charles Darwin
- René Descartes
- Albert Einstein
- Euclid
- Leonard Euler
- Michael Faraday
- Richard Feynman
- Rosalind Franklin
- Galileo Galilei
- Carl Friedrich Gauss
- Werner Heisenberg
- Alexander von Humboldt
- Hypatia
- Johannes Kepler
- Andrey Kolmogorov
- Antoine Laurent Lavoisier
- Mary Leakey
- Antony van Leeuwenhoek
- Gottfried Leibniz
- Carl Linnaeus
- Mikhail Lomonosov
- James Clerk Maxwell
- Gregor Mendel
- Dmitri Mendeleev
- Merit-Ptah
- Nasir al-Din al-Tusi
- Nabu-rimanni
- John von Neumann
- Isaac Newton
- Louis Pasteur
- Plato
- Ptolemy
- Ernest Rutherford
- Andrey Sakharov
- Claude Shannon
- Shen Kuo
- Socrates
- Alan Turing
- Xi Ling Shi
- Zu Chongzhi