Cyber Security in the Ancient World: Part 1
Introduction:
Welcome to ‘Cyber Security in the Ancient World’. When thinking of communication security, we often think of computer systems, banks, and secret services, like the FBI and CIA. Yet, the Greeks and Roman knew everything about hiding secrets and securing confidential information too. In this series of ten videos, we will discuss ten examples of secret communication in the Greco-Roman world from the 8th century BCE to the 4th century CE. We will see the Spartans and Caesar going to war, cipher codes, invisible ink, love letters, and ultimately: someone carrying his own death sentence without knowing.
When and why did the Greeks and Romans use secret communication? What secrets did they hide from their enemies? We will see this and much more in this series. So, welcome to ‘Cyber Security in the Ancient World’.
Episode 1: Bellerophon’s death sentence: Homer
Introduction: Homer:
In this first episode, we go back to the 8th century BCE, and we will take a look at a story from the Iliad, attributed to Homer. Very little is known about Homer. In fact, in academia there is a lot of discussion about who he was, and if he wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey. The details are irrelevant here since we will look at one story in the work.
The Iliad:
The Iliad -written in the 8th/7th century BCE - tells us about the Trojan War: the war between Troy and various Greek city-states in mythical times, long before Homer and his contemporaries lived.
Bellerophon:
In Book 6 of the Iliad, we read about the mythical hero Bellerophon. According to the Iliad, in an embedded story narrated by the grandson of the mythical hero Bellerophon, a secret message was once used to arrange a murder in the Near East. When Bellerophon was a guest at the court of king Proetus of Tiryns, he was accused by his wife, the queen, of attempting to rape her. Even though this was not true, King Proetus wanted to get rid of Bellerophon.
Yet, Proetus had a problem. In ancient Greece, guests were protected by the rules of xenia (guest friendship). These rules included that one could not kill a guest. Therefore, Proetus could not punish Bellerophon himself. To get rid of Bellerophon, Proetus instead invented a pretext and sent Bellerophon to his father-in-law Iobates, king of Lycia, who was the father of the queen. Proetus gave Bellerophon a sealed tablet to deliver to Iobates. The tablet contained ‘‘baneful’ or ‘evil signs’ requesting Iobates to kill Bellerophon.
When Iobates opened the tablet and read the text, he was shocked to discover that Bellerophon had raped his daughter. He also wanted to get rid of Bellerophon, but Iobates was also bound to the rules of ‘guest friendship’.
A secret hidden message:
Let us have a look at the tablet. Homer does not tell us what exactly was written on the tablet. It has been suggested that he used a form of code or pictograms, like we see in early cave art or hieroglyphics. Yet, nothing in the text suggests that any form of code was used. Since we do not and can not know anything concrete in this case about the character of the text or symbols, it cannot be said with any confidence that the case of Bellerophon’s letter as described in Homer’s Iliad is an example of ancient code-writing.
What we can say with certainty is that Homer’s narrative offers us an account of a secret private message sent from Proetus to Iobates in a sealed tablet. This was most likely written in a normal language other than Greek because of the oriental context.
When a message is hidden without the use of any coding, we speak of ‘steganography’. ‘Steganography’ comes from the Greek words ‘steganos’ (covered) and ‘graphein’ (writing). Hiding a message is the simplest form of securing confidential communication.
We can go a step further by writing the text in another language or a code. When text is substituted into other text, numbers of symbols, we speak of ‘cryptography’ instead of ‘steganography’. ‘Cryptography’ comes from the Greek words ‘kryptos’ (secret) and ‘graphein’ (writing).
We will find out more about the use of cryptography and coding in other episodes.
Conclusion:
To summarise and conclude: Homer’s Iliad provides us with the oldest known example of a secret hidden message. Even though hiding the message by sealing the tablet seems simple, it worked. Bellerophon was delivering his own death sentence to king Iobates without knowing. Just think about it: What would you do if you found out that you were tricked and were carrying your death sentence?
And even though hiding this message was simple, it is a milestone in the use of secret communication in the ancient world. You have to start somewhere, and the Greeks started here with nothing less than a secret death sentence!
Ways of hiding secrets developed throughout the ages, as we will see in the next episodes. There is a lot more to come!
Thank you for watching
