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[7]
He, when he has received it, cannot otherwise get any meaning out of it,—since the letters have no connection, but are disarranged,—unless he takes his own
‘scytale’ and winds the strip of parchment about it, so that, when its spiral course is restored perfectly, and that which follows is joined to that which precedes, he reads around the staff, and so discovers the continuity of the message. And the parchment, like the staff, is called
‘scytale,’ as the thing measured bears the name of the measure.
Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives. with an English Translation by. Bernadotte Perrin. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1916. 4.
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