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Subject: Dead Media Working Note 04.0
Dead medium: Skytale, the Spartan code-stick
From: montfort_AT_well.com (Nick Montfort)
Source: THE LYSISTRATA OF ARISTOPHANES, a Modern
Translation by Douglass Parker. Mentor Books, NY 1964,
1970.
Parker, Parageographer and Professor of Classics at the
University of Texas, writes in a note to his 1964
translation of the Lysistrata, on page 121 of the
paperback edition:
"...a *skytale*, a tapered rod which was Sparta's
contribution cryptography. A strip of leather was wound
about the rod, inscribed with the message, and unwound for
transmission. A messenger then delivered the strip to the
qualified recipient, who deciphered it by winding it
around a rod uniform in size and shape with the first. Any
interceptor found a meaningless string of letters."
If I correctly recall my conversations with Professor
Parker on the matter of this code-stick, the device is
pronounced something like SCOO-TA-LA.
In the Lysistrata, the women of Sparta and Athens conspire
to deny their husbands sex until the two cities end their
ongoing war. The men, therefore, wander around with hard-
ons the whole time. The code-stick appears in
Aristophanes's comedy in the following scene between an
Athenian commissioner and a Spartan messenger: (From page
92 of Parker's Translation)
COMMISSIONER
[Throwing open the Spartan's cloak, exposing the phallus.]
You clown, you've got an erection!
HERALD
Hain't got no sech a thang! You stop this-hyer
foolishment!
COMMISSIONER
What *have* you got there, then?
HERALD
Thet-thur's a Spartan *e*pistle. In code.
COMMISSIONER
I have the key.
[Throwing open his cloak.]
Behold another Spartan *e*pistle. In code.
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Media | 0.01-02.0 | 02.1-04.0
| 04.1-06.0 | 06.1-08.0 |
08.1-10.0 | 10.1-12.0 |