There is a large body of peer-reviewed academic research published by classical scholars over the last century on the Sator Square. Supplementing this are various essays by classical scholars to help non-academic readers and/or clarify their own public position on the square's origin. However, there is also a considerable volume of non-academic work on the Sator Square published in books or blogs that are unsuitable for this article, and particularly non-academic sources that seek to support WP:FRINGE theories on the origin and purpose of the object; these will be removed.
Useful sources
Because of the scale of academic papers published on the Sator square over the last century, a number of academics have published papers to catalog and review the body of academic research at various times. A noted contemporary version is a paper published in 2003 by American academic Rose Mary Sheldon in the journal Cryptologia and is available to read online: The Sator rebus: An unsolved cryptogram?, and is a useful guide for Wikipedia editors.
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The first sentence in this section says "The word AREPO is a hapax legomenon (i.e. it appears nowhere else in Latin literature)." Nothing wrong with that.
Further down it says "French historian Jerome Carcopino interpreted AREPO as the Greek ἅπαξ, and believed that it came from the Gaulish word for a 'plough'". This looks confused to me, since "ἅπαξ" literally is the word "hapax", meaning "once", and "hapax legomenon" is the transliteration of the original Greek phrase "ἅπαξ λεγόμενον", meaning "said once". I sincerely doubt that Jerome Carcopino interpreted AREPO as the Greek word ἅπαξ, but I'll leave that for someone else to check.
At any rate it looks to me like it should just read "French historian Jerome Carcopino believed that AREPO came from the Gaulish word for a 'plough'" and leave the Greek out of it. Chuck Entz (talk) 09:57, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That makes sense to me; the current sentence is just a repeat of the concept of a hapax without realizing that it has already been introduced (and thus confusion to re-state under its Greek name). I have made the change you suggested. thanks for that. Aszx5000 (talk) 19:29, 28 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This is a two-dimensional, or super-, palindrome. Please verify the corresponding definitions in any of the commonly accepted reference resources and make appropriate changes to the article. Thank you. Idy58 (talk) 06:46, 5 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There are plenty of quality references that call it "acrostic" - it that your issue? Do you have quality references for what you are proposing? thanks. Aszx5000 (talk) 09:26, 9 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'll explain. Every 2D palindrome is also an acrostic. However not (by far!) every acrostic is a 2D palindrome, specifically most acrostics do not read the same in four directions. So by calling this word square an acrostic we are missing the definitive features that make it so special and thus misleading an uninformed reader. Idy58 (talk) 10:24, 9 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
So you are not disputing that it is a 2D acrostic palindrome only that being a 2D palindrome, it is already acrostic? Have I got that right? Given a lot of references refer to its 'acrostic' nature, I would still prefer to clarify that it is acrostic anyway? thanks. Aszx5000 (talk) 11:11, 9 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I can't explain the situation with more clarity than in my previous response. But here's analogy that illustrates my position, perhaps it will be helpful. You would not want to call an entry on herring "fish", you are talking about a specific type of fish and want to provide a name of that type. A 2D palindrome is an extremely specific (and rare, at least in European languages) type of an acrostic. So much so that calling it an acrostic is similar to calling herring not even a fish but a lifeform. Idy58 (talk) 11:29, 9 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You would not want to call an entry on herring "fish": our article on herring starts Herring are forage fish; taking a random fish FA as an example, Cutthroat trout begins The cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarkii) is a fish species. Per MOS:FIRST, we should start the article by stating the blindingly obvious (that page gives the example of The Spanish–American War (April 21 – August 13, 1898) was an armed conflict...) and then go into more detail as appropriate. UndercoverClassicistT·C18:23, 9 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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