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Fire Codes
The ancient origins of the Internet
On the roof of the royal palace at Argos, a watchman stares at the horizon. For a year now, he has been stationed there, with a single task: to look for a beacon fire signaling the fall of Troy and the end of the Trojan War. Suddenly, the stillness is broken; he sees the flame. The long wait is over: Troy has fallen.
This opening scene from Aeschylus’s tragedy Agamemnon perfectly describes the phryctoriae, a visual messaging system that used beacon fires. In the play, Clytemnestra, Agamemnon’s wife, explains how the signal is sent from one station to the next across a chain of elevated posts, until it reaches Argos.
The phryctoriae were used to send prearranged messages over long distances. The ancient Greeks, Persians, and later the Romans, used them to warn of invasions, announce victories, or coordinate troop movements. The relay stations were towers, built on high ground, within line of sight of each other, usually about 20 km apart. The system could only send one prearranged message per signal, depended on good weather, and required constant watchfulness.
By the 2nd century BCE, three major powers dominated the Mediterranean: the Roman Republic, Carthage, and the Hellenistic kingdoms, successors to Alexander the Great’s empire. Armies and navies faced a constant challenge: how to send…
