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[9] The money was in small bags, each of which contained a skytale1 which carried the notation of the amount of the money. Gylippus, not knowing of the skytale, secretly undid the bags and took out three hundred talents, and when, by means of the notation, Gylippus was detected by the ephors, he fled the country and was condemned to death.

1 The σκυτάλη was a staff used for writing in code. The Lacedaemonians had two round staves of identical size, the one kept at Sparta, the other in possession of commanders abroad. A strip of paper was rolled slantwise around the staff and the dispatch written lengthwise on it; when unrolled the dispatch was unintelligible, but rolled slantwise round the commander's skytale it could be read. Even if Gylippus had found the dispatch he could not have read it.

Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.

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