A Discourse on Anagrams as a Part of the Cabala

...the next Continuing from the previous page's "pro-" to complete "proximam" (the next). [letter], B for A, C for B, D for C, and for X, a double AA. Here you should note that Y and Z were not counted among the Latin letters—a point which Victorinus Afer A 4th-century grammarian and rhetorician. also noted in his Grammar. Regarding these singular letters, one should consult Suetonius in his Life of Julius and Life of Augustus, Dio Cassius, book 39, Aulus Gellius, book 17, chapter 9, Isidore Isidore of Seville, whose "Etymologies" (Origines) was a standard medieval reference., book 1 of the Etymologies, chapter 24, and our own Cryptographia Puteanus is citing his own earlier work on secret writing..

But are hiding places of this kind safe enough? From letters to numbers—which are typically represented by letters—names were once ingeniously transferred and made into ἰσόψηφα isopsēpha: words that have the same numerical value when their letters are added up..

An example is found in Artemidorus An ancient Greek professional diviner and author of a book on dream interpretation., book 4, chapter 26. Among the Greeks, the word γραῦς original: graus, meaning old woman, when seen by those who are ill, is a sign of death: for it represents [the number] 704; a number which is also fulfilled by the phrase ἡ ἐκφορά original: hē ekphora, the carrying out, or funeral. Doubtless an old woman is closest to her funeral—the ready property, so to speak, of Proserpina The Roman queen of the underworld..

Thus Δαμαγόρας Damagoras, a certain depraved and ruinous man, and λοιμὸς loimos, meaning plague, appear in an ancient Greek Epigram from the second book of the Anthology: for their numbers are equal, 420, an equal evil, as if weighed on a scale; and there was more "plague" in the man, as the poet jests therein, than in the disease itself.