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I REF ID:A69B07 

• SECRB'l',. ' COD'IDEl''l'IAL . RESTRICHD 

OPPICB.OJ' THE CBID'. COJlllJBICA'!IOJIS RBSBARCB 

DA:L'B ~ ·~ ""1. 

TO 

- w. P. Friedman ••••••••••••••••••• --- Mark Rhoads •••••••••••••••••••••• -- Capt L. D. Calljmahoa •••••• -. ••••• -- Lt. T. P. Pavcett •••••••••••••••• -- Margaret c. Deeter ••••••••••••••• --

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l. B. HUl't ••••••••••••••••••••••• 

w. Pettengill ••••• ;-.·· •••••••••• 

~!home.a A. Killer••••••••••••••••• 

Yvonne Oeddea •••••••••••••••••••• -

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Aa d1acuaaed 

As requea._ed Concul'l'ence or comments 

I.atol'DIBtion I: .to1'V&1'41Dg 

Intormat1on • retUl'll. 

Intol'lllB.tion & .tile 

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In.to upon vh1oh to baae 1'81>11' 

Recomme.ndat1on 

s1sna tUl'e if' approved.. 

) Your action b7 

PROK 

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oved for ele se b N A on 01-02-2014 u s nt to E.O. 1 
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REF ID:A69607 - . . 

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'Prinoeton, Indiana 

· 9 November 1948 

Dear Mr Friedman, 

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You may recall that several months ago I mentioned . • - havins seen a description of a cipher used by the Roman Emp-

; ·r'" • ·, • .,, •" • ~ -. 

eror, Augustus , and his wile, Livia, ?or their private 

;Iii • 

cor~es'p~~dence ·and for the secret 11 dossiers" maintained _ .. ~ . l •. 

on all: or , . r. ' - ,.;. • .. . ~\, .. 

.... t~ir oponents and political enemies. While I 

.. . . · .. have been am • .. · 1,, 

at home I hunted up the reference and· 

... 

. .....1 • inclu~ing a transcript thereof'. You will notice that it . )' 

-~ 

.. t 

• 

! 

: 

·' ·. 

•.• 

t.. .. 

is natt&ken from an anoient writer but instead is from ~ . a m~e~ i

1

h.istorical novei 11 by the British writer Robert L ~ •• • 

Graves'. In addition to the book from which I have cited, ''I . . ' -Claudius", Graves has written several other historical novels . ·. , . . 

includ1ng a seonnd book"on Claudius ("Ci.audius the God" - . . . . covering the rei*n of Claudius as fourth emperor of Rome, 11 I 

Claudius 11 being conoerned wi.th the principate of Augustus and 

' the reigns of' Tiberius and Caligula, the second and third 

emperors), a novel about Bel1sar1us, the· general who reconquered 

. ~-taly .ror Justinian, "the Eastern 1~oman Emperor, from the .. ., 

_Ostrogoths in the sixth century A.D., a novel about Milton, and ... more recently two "novels" presenting an interpretation of' 

the voyage of' the Argonauts for 'the Golden Fleece ("Hercules 

Ky, Shi_pmate") and a relatively ignored story of' the life of 

·- Jesus ( 11King Jesus"- which I expected to be proscribed and banned 
by both Gatholics and~ot~a\i.?)6QJ'th Of Which latter I 

leaneA heavily on the modtrn studies of ancient magic and 

religious cults begun by Frazerldt'i 11 The Golden Bough". I 

mention these additional works by Graves merely as evidence 

that '.he is a competent histo*an. I have read all of them 

·e,pe~t th~ one concerning Milton, and they all reveal a 

very.high familiarity with the ancient sources. In the case 

of the two books on Claudius I have had occasion to check . . on·a. number ot stories and statements woven 1nto his narrative 

-··~~.the basic facts and statements 1n all of them are based 

on source materials. Graves has taken an astonishingly large L 

number of allu· io:,rie to the lire of Claudius from·· classical . -

Latin ,Greek,and even - - . H·brew writers (notably Josephus) and 

has also availed himaelf ot epigraphic and archaeological r ,.,. I PE : • •• • 

. - materials and has assembled them in .. . ... historical novel form f 

mer~lY. by the device of • fictional personal narrative. His I 

"n9vels have not.been noted ~y orthodox historians,nowever, ~ • • • t• 

. . ~ 'beq~u,e ~· has not bothered to footnote and document the 

.exact·cla•s!_~al:~~urc~ tor his i~dividual episodes ~nd events. ,., ~ 

l therefore a~ not able at pres~nt to tnace this desc~iption 

pt, ~~e_c1pher to a classical source but w~ll attempt to do · 

s~ ~t my first opportuni~y to visit the Library of Congress, 

~ h~ve digressed with the above account of Graves, his 

wri~ings, a_nd bis appar~~ methods, solely to indicate the 

~eason I have for notqueetioning ais veracity. I have no " I " . 

dQun~ that .~~ ancient source can b~ foun~ which will give 

a; desoript&on of this Augustan.cipher--so far as I know it is 

• . not generally known to cryptographers .• 

I hope you will find this description interesting and I 

w111 let you know if I suocede in tracing down Graves's source, 
... . . -~ 

• . . 

. unless, as rnay well be REF ID: A69607, · tbe c~se, ycu ==e ~.ready f'am111ar 

w1th 1t and aan tell me where to look. 

·,, rivate Ci her of Au tus and Livia. 

obert Graves, I Claudius New York ,1934) P• 248: 

The_ common c1pher was s1mply writing Latin E f'or Greek 

.--Alpha, Latin F forGreek Beta, G tor Gamma, H for Delta and ~ so on. [ Cf'. tbe so-called "Julius Caesar Cipher" or "Caesar".] 

The key ot the higher o1pher was next to impossible to · discover, It was provided by the f'1rst hundred lines of' 

the ~1rst book of' the Iliad, which had to be read concurrently ~ · · with the writing of the cipher, each letter in the writing · being represented by the number of letters of the alphabet intervening oetween 1t and the ·corresponding ~~tter in Homer. 

Thus the· first letter of the first word or the first line 

of the first book of the Iliad is Mu. Suppose the first 

letter of the first word of an entry in the cossier to be 

Upsilon. There are seven ~etters in the G~eek alphabet intervening betwe ~n_Ku and Upsilon D IY_,Nij.Jj,Omicron,Pi,Rho, Sigma , Tau , Upsilon.] so Upsilon-would be written as 7. 

In tpis plan the .alphabet would.be thought ~r as circular, 

·Omega, tbe last, letter,roilbwing Alpha, the ffrst, so that ~ the distimoe._bet'!~e.n Upsilon and Alpha would be 4 but the 

distance betwwen Alpha and Upsilon would be·1e. It was 

Augustus 1 s invent.io"l: 

I c.r_.•1t sec···~ba~ they_ ,·ould use .. if' ome·ga and Alpha were 

= ··- I • • involved ~~ they did not have a zero sign • Possibly the .. I • 'f 

orig1na~ f'fom-w~1ch_araves 1s trans~ating will have additional 1nforma~1on • • • 4 .. 

I bope to+ find you baOK.at work when I return the 18th • .. Yours,