Caesar, Cleopatra and love mail troubles

(This short drama was written for and dedicated to Cleopatra of my soul - Olga from Moscow, whom I met and knew only via internet. She was born at 1978 and died at 2007. Her life was not easy but in spite of it she always was cheerful and bright. I shall always think of her with a great heart-lightening joy.)

How did people live until the invention of the electronic mail? In general - just the same way as we do. They thirsted for intercourse not less than now - only process of letter-delivery was slightly more sophisticated.

That was not easy, but very interesting time for postmen, surely.

Let us remember the correspondence between Caesar and Cleopatra as the most outstanding example.

...As he was reclining after a good dinner on a lot of the nearly-soft pillows upholstered with a king-crimson velvet and stuffed with I-fear-to-think-what, Caesar sometimes fell in such thought: "And why so long had not I have the intercourse with the woman of wonder, sweet Cleopatra?!!"

Had thought so, he took a clay tablet and started to compose a love note. The matter went toughly: there appeared necessity to put right many mistakes and often do some stylistic corrections, while the wheat-bread crumb was not the best eraser for the lead pencil. That made Caesar angry and messages usually came pretty short. For example here is one of such drafts, which was saved for us in the Library of Alexandria.

"Dear Cleopuppy! - an emperor wrote, - I want to... (crossed out). I have not seen thee very long, so rub thyself with ointments and came, please, on the day of Mars of the second week of the Julius month to my palace. We shall... (dashed out) Let us love. Caesar of The Whole Roman Empire. (date-and-cross)"

Had been satisfied at last with the text of the message, emperor got his ciphering notepad and started to encrypt his writing. However the code, which he used was quite unreliable - each letter was simply substituted by some symbol (or other letter) - that is all the secret. Nowadays this system is called "straight-substitution code" or "Caesar's cipher". It is known by the tales of "The Gold-Bug" (E.A.Poe) or "The Dancing Men" (A.C.Doyle), that for decrypting such messages (by the third person to whom code-table is unknown) primitive method of counting letters frequency could be used, or even decipherer can just dance from the supposition that the first word is "Dear".

That was the rub. The algorithms like "RSA with 256-bit key" were not invented by those good old times. However Caesar was not a full fool, or, maybe, he was a fool but the fool full of paranoia - he had some doubts about his secret cipher and so he also resort to the help of the special science which we now call "steganography" - it explains how the information should be hidden from strange eyes.

Caesar, lifted his head from the pillows and called in a weak voice: "Ha-a-ay! Courier... Slave... Run here!" - and here ran specially educated slave. Caesar clutched the enormous and horrifyingly sharp knife, hung at his belt for he could have an opportunity to chop loaves, sausages and cabbages "not leaving the cash-desk" (*1) - and faster than the flick of the eyelid he had his messenger shiningly shaved.

On the bald head of the unlucky slave he painted his cryptogram with the chemical pencil, swearing and breathing heavily through nostrils since he was using the complicated "dead Latin language" - and, to avoid the erasing and the curious eyes, he covered inscriptions with the special cap.

Sooner or later the messenger became overgrown with the chevelure again - then he was freed of his cap, had his mouth sewed, and after had been showed the direction to Cleopatra, was issued to his path.

People at the lands by the road from Rome to Egypt were looking warily at the man clad in blue uniform with the letters "Roma Post" on the back, the brown thread on the lips and the unbelievably wild hairs on the head - and said: "Behold yonder - this running man seems to be a courier to Cleopatra!"

At last the postman brought himself to the destination, where the well-known Queen-of-Love tenderly welcomed him, shaved him and, whistling the tune "Don't think in haughty manner of the moments" - the melody from the movie about Shtirlitz (*2) - started deciphering. At the end, understood what her addresser wished, she burst with happy laughter and opened her notebook to check whether the asked day was free.

She, however, was the queen not only of love - that is why many days of her life were unacceptable for dating. So answers often were of the following kind: "Caeoucik! Have no opportunity on this day - the meeting with federal parliament is fixed to it! Choose some other! Love thee and kiss! Cleoppy."

After that she wrote the answer on the body of the long-suffering slave, grew hairs on his head and send him to the back path. It became known that she was even slier than Caesar - once the messenger was caught by the agents of some Third World country secret service, maybe they were Chinese with their incomprehensible writings (*3) - who shaved him and to their great surprise did not found a word on his bald head. Cleopatra grew slave's hair only for distracting of eyes, but wrote her message on his feet or, maybe, in some other intimate place. Disappointed spies did not examine courier thoroughly and did not guess this trick...

That is how complicated was the life in good old times. Remember it when you use services of modern communications!

(*1) Popular phrase, meaning "without delay" - cut of the "Check your money not leaving cash-desk".

(*2) Shtirlitz is the main hero of the popular Soviet movie (and book) "Seventeen moments of spring" about Soviet spy mission in Germany at the spring of 1944. Here was a piece where Shtirlitz is deciphering message from headquarters.

(*3) "Chinese writing" is idiom which means "something incomprehensible" - similar in English is maybe "Greek writing" but it could not be used since Cleopatra was Greek herself.