13 JANUARY 2001, Page 23

Ancient & modern

EMAIL is causing all sorts of problems for business employees who 'misuse' it. This raises many questions about the meaning of the term 'misuse' — particularly who defines it — and where 'privacy' comes into the equation.

The lack of regular and effective means of communication in the ancient Greek world had an interesting consequence: where such communications were established, e.g. in places such as Persia, they were regarded as the mark of a closed, tyrannical society. Only a centrally controlled authority could establish such systems. Free, self-governing Greeks wanted their news open, public and ready for debate.

This left the letter as a somewhat dodgy document with connotations of secrecy and therefore, probably, of unhealthy conspiracy. The first letter we hear of in Western literature bears this out. It appears in Homer's Iliad and Bellerophon is carrying it. It contains a message which he is to deliver to his host, ordering his host to kill him.

For all that, there is no doubt that secrecy does have its uses, especially in warfare, and the military strategist Aeneas 'the tactician' (4th century BC) gives us some fascinating tips for the transmission of top-secret info. The first condition of all such messages is that receiver and sender must have a private arrangement between them. Only thus will they know what they are doing. For example, one might send a quite innocent document, but with those letters which make up the real message somehow marked. One might send a messenger with a public message but, before he leaves (and without his knowledge), sew into his sandals a secret message written on thin-beaten tin (paper gets soggy). The reply would come the same way, the message inserted while the messenger was asleep.

Then again, secret messages could be disguised to look like something else. Aeneas quotes messages sent on leaves bound into a leg wound, and written on lead fashioned to look like an earring. Messages could be hidden under the breastplate; written on a balloon hidden inside a container; wound round arrows and shot into predetermined locations; placed inside a dog's collar; written in the spaces between the fingers; and written on a slave's shaved head and sent when the hair had grown.

Email is a godsend to central-control freaks, employers and government alike. Alas, we shall all have to become

more cryptic. Peter Jones