The book sets out to explain a collection of 100 short riddles in Latin. Devised more than 1500 years ago, these were riddles prepared for annual celebrations connected with the Roman feast of Saturnalia.
The author takes a rigorous analytical approach, coming up with results that many will find surprising.
In essence the book shows that these are NOT the conventional metrical riddles that many have long perceived them to be.
Instead they are highly sophisticated spelling riddles which exploit the age-old technique of literary metathesis, a compositional trick known also as transposition, or as anagrammatic dispersion.
In terms better understood in the ancient world, they may equally be considered as cross-woven spelling riddles of the type known in Greek as γριφος ( = griphos ), or in Latin as scirpus.
The first name came about because the primary meaning of γριφος is a creel, a type of fishing basket intricately woven from dried plant stems (wicker work). A secondary meaning then developed, denoting a particular form of riddle. Such usage was down to the fact that here is another intricate artefact, this time constructed from inter-woven words.
The equivalent name in Latin was scirpus, a word whose primary meaning is a bulrush. Again, its use by association to denote the griphos type of riddle arises because these are riddles whose very nature emulates the intersecting intricacy observed in articles formed from plaited rush-work.
The book shows, riddle by riddle, how the composers of the 'Symphosius' Aenigmata have made intensive use of this powerful poetic device. Their purpose is to convey, but only to more observant readers, incremental information that reaches far beyond the literal sense of the riddle. It's information hasty readers are almost certain to overlook. Only when we succeed in framing and solving the spelling riddles do we then recover what the original writers have determined to conceal.
In this way numerous secrets, preserved from the age of antiquity, are now revealed in this book.
This use of metathesis plainly amounts to a form of cryptography (hidden writing). At the same time it achieves the merits of steganography (hidden in plain sight), ensuring that an unsuspecting majority of readers will never even notice what the writer has done.
To demonstrate very simply what this trick entails, and to show how easily it can work for any writer in any language, the same metathesis technique has been incorporated into the title (in English) of the book.
For the word RIDDLES appears there twice, initially concealed in the word DISORDERLY, then repeated in its literal form.
The layout of the book is also unusual, printed in colour in landscape format at A4 size. In this format Hatfield is able to explain how these Latin riddles work, at the same time exposing the myriad of secrets they conceal.
The addition of accurate translations to English results in a book which is about Latin riddles, but which remains easy to follow without any need to know Latin.
But why is it so important to understand the use of metathesis as explained in this book? The answer is that we find almost exactly the same technique deployed in the Koine Greek texts of the gospels upon which the Christian church has sought for so long to rely. The purpose is the same as with the 'Symphosius' Aenigmata. The spelling riddles so abundant in the gospel texts serve to withhold from more hasty readers (and from all who read only from translations) the vital secret component of the gospel message.
Intriguingly, the 'Symphosius' collection of riddles in Latin shares a second feature with the gospel texts in Greek. In both we encounter passages where the notion of 'selling and buying' serves as a metaphor for the steps we must ourselves take when working from a text that exploits the potential of anagram riddles.