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Book Four

Ch. 5.                    139

But I do not dare to promise that this device will everywhere serve our purpose. For it abounds in difficulties, especially in verse. In prose, I grant, its use is greater and its employment easier, if an agreement is made beforehand in regard to the figures which the distributed letters are to form and if, after the manner of a key, those figures are indicated by points or other signs designed to escape the observation of all readers, even careful readers, except the confidant alone. That the case may not lack an example, especially as the copies to be obtained of the writings of Optatianus and Hrabanus are few, I insert here two poems, the one by Optatianus, the other by Hrabanus. First comes Optatianus’s scheme, together with Optatianus’s explanation of the same.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Beginning with the first letter of the first verse and following along the squares included by lines, descend to the eighth letter of the eighth verse, and then, turning, reascend, and so continue until you reach the next to the last letter of the same eighth verse; you will then read from these verses the words:

Publilius Optatianus Porfirius haec lusi.

In like way, beginning with the first letter of the last line, go to the eighth letter of the ninth line, and then, by successive turns, ascend and descend until you reach the next to the last letter of the ninth line, and you read the following heroic verse:

Omne genus metri tibi pangens optume Basse

Which read backward, becomes a Sotadic:

Basse optume pangens tibi metri genus omne.

Similarly, these letters: extending from the first letter of the sixth line to the thrid letter of the eighth line, the three letters “HIC”; from the thirteenth letter of the eighth line to the fifteenth letter of the sixth line, “VER; thence to the seventeenth letter of the eighth line, “SU”; then from the twenty-seventh letter of the eighth line to the twenty ninth letter of the sixth line, “SUA”; thence to the thirty-first letter of the eighth line, “RI”; then from the thirty-first letter of the ninth line to the twenty-ninth letter of the eleventh line, “OCO”; thence to the thirdty-seventh letter of the ninth line, “LO”; then form the seventeenth letter of the ningth line to the fifteenth letter of the eveventh line, “RED”; thence to the thirteenth letter of the ninth line, “IS”; then from the third letter of the ninth line to the first letter of the evleventh line, “PAR”: make the Endecasyllabic verse: