Commonplace Book: Aeneas Tacticus on Secret Messages

[ricardienne]

One of the problems with fantasy novels is that when you use magic for things like, say, encoding secret messages so that they look innocuous to anyone but their intended recipient, you take a lot of the potential fun out of it. Here are just three of the many examples of ways to send secret messages provided by Aeneas Tacticus (c. 4th/3rd century

Comments

[awomanthatsblue]

Ah yes, the old engrave-it-on-tin trick. I love it!

[ricardienne]

Just add thin sheets of various metals to your siege-preparedness kit!

[achyvi]

Never leave home without it!

[ricardienne]

I mean, you never know when you're going to be like the chorus in Euripides's Phoenician Women and get stuck in the middle of a siege when you just planned to stop over on your way to somewhere else!

[existentialgoat]

I can't decide which I love more: these tricks, or the fact that the guy who made them up/wrote them down is named Aeneas Tacticus.

[ricardienne]

Well, we do only call him Aeneas Tacticus because we don't know much about him except that he wrote a books about military strategy. (He might have been a 4th century Stymphalian general, but that wouldn't help much, because the only thing we know about said general is that he was from Stymphalos in the 4th century and named Aeneas.)

[existentialgoat]

Awww, spoil my fun. ;)

[ricardienne]

I'm sorry! *takes off pedantic graduate student hat*. Actually, his parents nicknamed him ὁ Τακτικός because when he was a baby, a snake crept into his crib but he mustered the household mice into formation and had them fight it off.