TheCodeBreakers
the guards along the road. When the message reached its
destination, no one was able to guess the secret until, as I
understand, Cleomenes' daughter Gorgo, who was the wife of
Leonidas, discovered it and told the others that, if they scraped the
wax off, they would find something written on the wood
underneath. This was done; the message was revealed and read,
and afterwards passed on to the other Greeks.
The rest is well-known. Thermopylae, Salamis, and Plataea ended the
danger that the flame of Western civilization would be extinguished by an
Oriental invasion. The story is not without a certain bitter irony,
however, for Gorgo, who may be considered the first woman cryptanalyst,
in a way pronounced a death sentence on her own husband: Leonidas
died at the head of the heroic band of Spartans who held off the Persians
for three crucial days at the narrow pass of Thermopylae.
annaabi.ee 
