Re: Translation question
| From: | John Cowan <cowan@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, December 7, 2000, 2:58 |
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On Wed, 6 Dec 2000, DOUGLAS KOLLER wrote:
> According to him (undoubtedly via the book he was using),
> Caesar Augustus came up with this really keen cipher system where you just
> shift the alphabet over one letter:
>
> ABCDEFG... becomes
> BCDEFGH... (no one would be able to crack that one)
Hey, if it works, it works. Julius Caesar' version mapped ABCD... to DEFG...,
which apparently Augustus though was too complicated.
> (the code word [i.e. of the next cipher] is 'neutron' [the next cipher may
> well be in English])."
And is probably a Vigenere cipher.
> Don't know if "dictum arcanum" is an adequate translation of "code word"
In technical language, "key", not "code word".
> (wouldn't "shibboleth" or a variation thereon have been available at that
> time?),
By no means. Augustus probably had heard of the Hebrew Scriptures, but
certainly words from it were not circulating at that time.
Come to think of it, does "shibboleth" = "word whose pronunciation can
be used to divide people into two groups" (as opposed to its literal
meaning "river") have currency in any language but English?
--
John Cowan cowan@ccil.org
One art/there is/no less/no more/All things/to do/with sparks/galore
--Douglas Hofstadter