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//Source(s): 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)
 * Dead medium: Skytale, the Spartan code-stick**
 * From: montfort@well.com (Nick Montfort)**

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.