From the time of its earliest use the technique of writing and reading was appreciated by the ancients as an apparatus of privacy or secrecy. All communication is to some extent public in a society without writing. Certainly a message sent by herald and declaimed in the open air is a less private communiqué than a letter written for your eyes alone to read. Early readers and writers seem to have been intensely aware of this difference. There is an ancient riddle, attributed to Sappho, that expresses their attitude:
ἔστι φύσις ϑήλεια βρέφη σῴζουσ᾽ ὑπὸ κόλποις
αὑτῆς, ὄντα δ’ ἄφωνα βοὴν ἳστησι γεγωνὸν
καὶ διὰ πόντιον οἶδμα καὶ ἠπείρου διὰ πάσης
οἶς ἐϑέλει ϑνητῶν, τοῖς δ᾽ οὐδὲ παροῦσιν ἀκούειν
ἔξεστιν, κωφὴν δ᾽ ἀκοῆς αἴσϑησιν ἔχουσιν.…
What creature is it (Sappho asks) that is female in nature and hides in its womb unborn children who, although they are voiceless, speak to people far away?
Sappho answers the riddle herself:
ϑήλεια μέν νύν ἐστι φύσις ἐπιστολή, βρέφη δ᾽ ἐν αὑτῇ περιφέρει τὰ γράμματα· ἄφωνα δ᾽ ὄντα ταῦτα τοῖς πόρρω λαλεῖ οἷς βούλεϑ᾽, ἕτερος δ᾽ ἂν τύχῃ τις πλησίον ἑστὼς ἀναγινώσκοντος, οὐκ ἀκούεται.
The female creature is a letter (epistle). The unborn children are the letters (of the alphabet) it carries. And the letters, although they have no voices, speak to people far away, whomever they wish. But if some other person happens to be standing right beside the one who is reading, he will not hear. (Antiphanes, CAF, fr. 196; Ath. 450c)
Letters make the absent present, and in an exclusive way, as if they were a private code from writer to reader. The poet Archilochos applies to his own poetry the metaphor of a code, for he refers to himself, sending off a poem to someone, as a skutalē. Best known as a method employed by the Spartans for sending despatches, the skutalē was a staff or baton around which was wound a roll of leather. This was used as a code simply by wrapping it in a particular way, writing the message across the result, and then sending the unwound strip to the receiver, who rewound it on a similar staff to read it (Jeffrey 1961, 57). Archilochos’ metaphor understands the act of communication as an intimate collusion between writer and reader. They compose a meaning between them by matching two halves of a text. It is a meaning not accessible to others.
A well-known passage of Aeschylus’ Suppliants also emphasizes the cryptographic possibilities of writing. Here King Pelasgos, announcing a democratic decision viva voce, contrasts his own plain and public utterance with the furtive record of written texts:
τοιάδε δημόπρακτος ἐκ πόλεως μία
ψήφος κέκρανται, μήποτ᾽ ἐκδοῦναι βίαι
στόλον γυναικῶν· τῶνδ᾽ ἐφήλωται τορῶς
γόμφος διαμπὰξ ὡς μένειν ἀραρότως.
ταῦτ᾽ οὐ πίναξίν ἐστιν ἐγγεγραμμένα
οὐδ᾽ ἐν πτυχαῖς βύβλων κατεσφραγισμένα,
σαφῆ δ᾽ ἀκούεις ἐξ ἐλευθεροστόμου
γλώσσης.
Such is the decree that issues from the city
by unanimous popular vote.…
A bolt has been nailed straight through this,
piercingly,
so it stays fixed.
It has not been written on tablets
nor sealed up in the folds of books,
but you hear it plain from a free-speaking
tongue.
(942-49)
Words that are written, Pelasgos implies, may fold away and disappear. Only the spoken word is not sealed, folded, occult or undemocratic.
Now folding books and tablets were a reality in the ancient world. The most common writing surface for letters and messages in archaic and classical times was the deltos, a hinged wooden or wax tablet that was folded up on itself after inscription to conceal the words written within. The reader unfolded the tablet to confront a meaning meant only for him. Tablets of metal were also used for writing, especially by people consulting an oracle. For example at Dodona, active as an oracular sanctuary from the seventh century, archaeologists have uncovered about one hundred and fifty tablets on which were written questions for the oracle of Zeus. The great variety in handwriting, spelling and grammar on the tablets indicates that each was inscribed by the inquirer himself. The tablets are of lead. Each is cut in a narrow band like a ribbon with writing in two to four lines running the length of the band. In nearly every instance the band after writing has been neatly folded several times so as to conceal the writing inside. This folding was evidently the reason for the shape of the lead ribbons and also for the fact that the written inquiry was never carried over to the reverse of the band (Parke 1967, 114). The words you write on your lead at Dodona are a secret between you and the oracle of Zeus.
Folded texts and private meanings were a literal fact for ancient readers. But there is a metaphorical reality here too. It is a metaphor as old as Homer, whose telling of the Bellerophon myth in Iliad 6 is the oldest story we have in Greek about letters, reading and writing.