The name "Fryktoria" means a communication network which was used in antiquity to transfer optical messages using the light of fires or torches. The great poet Aeschylus who lived in the 5th century BC, describes in detail in his tragedy 'Agamemnon' (verses 283-316) an implementation of such a network, built to signal the fall of Troy to the Myceneans. This network, which was designed by Palamedes according to the much older and mostly lost epic poem Cypria, employed eight stations and covered an aggregate line-of-sight distance of 550 kilometers, having the longest span at approximately 130Km over sea. Watching 'Agamemnon' with the eyes of a telecom engineer, we identify the same protocol timing issues of the modern optical communications in the words of the "fryktoria" operator, a soldier who was afraid that he might fall asleep in the dark, cold night and miss the signals from afar.

Later optical networks had a more elaborate handshaking scheme. In the "Pyrseia" system of the 3rd century BC, the transmitter made visible two torches, the receiver acknowledged with two torches, all parties went dark for a few moments and finally, the transmitter started to send the message payload. This system encoded each letter of the alphabet with two words of five bits each.

Map created by Fryktoria GIS. Background tiles provided by OpenStreetMap.