The phrase "Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas", read in the traditional Latin system from left to right and top to bottom, holds an array of meanings, which we'll explore shortly. Notably, this phrase is a palindrome, meaning it can be read from right to left as well. This intriguing characteristic extends to its vertical reading, whether from the left column top-down or the right column bottom-up, the phrase remains the same.
Decoding the Phrase: A Journey into Ancient Roman Linguistics
The subject of the phrase, "Sator", can be interpreted as "sower", either in the literal agricultural sense, a figurative deity, or a paternal figure. The ambiguity of "Arepo", the second word, however, adds to the enigma of the Sator square. This word, exclusive to the Sator square, has no known references in other Latin texts. Some suggest "Arepo" could be a proper noun, while others interpret it as "billhook", a tool for harvesting grain, associated with Saturn, the protector of agriculture in late medieval Latin.
The final three words, "Tenet, opera, rotas", translate to "keep the wheels carefully" or "drive the wheels carefully", reinforcing the agricultural theme.
Possible Interpretations: From Sowers to Celestial Wheels
Given these translations, the phrase could mean "The Sower with the billhook carefully guides the wheels" or "The Sower Arepo carefully guides the wheels". Other interpretations include "The Sower with the chariot carefully guides the wheels" or "The Sower in the field guides the celestial wheels". More imaginative interpretations suggest "The Sower of an arepos maintains with his labor the convent" or "The Creator of the lands keeps (governs) the celestial wheels". Despite these interpretations, the exact meaning of "Arepo" remains uncertain, as it is a unique instance, or "Hapax legomenon", of the word in Latin texts.
What if the words are acronyms and acrostics?
Those I have mentioned are the meanings reading the words in the Sator square in the traditional way. But the words could also be acronyms, thus hiding more complex meanings. For example, Arepo could be "Aeternus Rex Excelsus Pater Omnipotens" (Eternal Exalted King, Omnipotent Father), and tenet could be "Tota Essentia Numero Est Tracta ("The whole essence is obtained by number") or Tecta Erat Nocte Exordio Terra ("In the beginning the Earth was covered with darkness"), and so on. Whoever invented it had a lot of fun, and came up with a composition that could puzzle puzzle enthusiasts for centuries.
How far back does the Sator square go?
The earliest known examples of the square date to a period certainly before the eruption of Pompeii. Several Sator squares have in fact been found in the city under Vesuvius, at least three, including one in the villa of Paquio Proculus and one in a column of the Palestra Grande. After the eruption the square continued to be brought back just about everywhere. We find it in England at Cirencester, ancient Corinium, but also in France at Rochemaure, Le Puy-en-Velay, at Oppède in Vaucluse, or at Santiago de Compostela in Spain, in the ruins of the Roman fortress of Aquincum in Hungary, at Riva San Vitale in Switzerland, and in Italy in the abbeys of Veroli and Montecassino, in the Pieve di San Giovanni in Campiglia Marittima, in the churches of Santa Maria Maddalena in Campo Marzo in Verona and San Michele di Pescantina, in the Cathedral of Siena, and in many, many other places.
Interestingly, the Square of the Sator was found in contexts often related to Christianity, and how no examples are known to exist prior to the spread of the new religion. In Pompeii among other places, the spread of Christianity before the eruption is certain, so Christians would have been just in time to leave us written testimony, just before they were buried by the ashes and lapilli of Vesuvius.
The Sator Square is a Christian symbol?
The solution to the question is interesting, because "Sator" could be interpreted not as Saturn but as "God the Father," and thus the phrase would take on a profoundly different meaning. The translation in the most Christian sense could be "The Creator, the author of all things, carefully keeps his own works," but the square can also be anagrammed in the way we see below in the figure:
Where the word "Paternoster" recurs in a Greek cross with four waste letters, A and O, alpha and omega, which could mean, in Christian symbolism, the beginning and the end (they are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet). According to the religious interpretation, the Sator square could be a symbol for Christians, a recognition among adherents to the new religion during Roman persecution. In this case, history holds water because the first large-scale persecutions took place much later than the eruption of Pompeii, in the 3rd and 4th centuries, and so this interpretation I feel to say can be considered a distortion of historical reality.
An Apotropaic Symbol?
The Sator square could be a symbol, a wish for good luck and prosperity that can ward off the evil eye, something scaramantic. This thesis finds vigor in its medieval use, when in scrolls, churches and writings of different kinds the Sator Square is used with auspicious function for a childbirth, to get a criminal caught, to improve crops and so on. An amulet against the evil eye, to be employed when it is most needed.
What can we say in conclusion?
It is intriguing to think that 5 simple Latin words can hide so many hidden meanings, a fine example of how little we know about our past. The simple interpretation "The Sower with the billhook carefully guides the wheels" lends itself to so many deviations of meaning, and (in the writer's opinion) may simply conceal a proverb, a saying that we moderns try hard to understand without succeeding.
If we had met an ordinary Pompeian in 78 A.D. confronted with a Sator Square, he would have told us its meaning very easily. Let's think of him facing a curious child who asks him the meaning:
"It's a proverb, it means you have to know how to drive the chariot to reap the harvest," or he would have answered differently but with equal simplicity. Perhaps Arepo was a proper name, as suggested by some, a funny mask like "Harlequin," and who knows what meaning it had for the Latins inserted in that phrase.
The reality is that we will probably never know what lies behind "Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas," it is part of that popular cultural heritage now lost among the sands of time, an enigma of our ancestors that tells us how, without precise references that allow us to interpret it, the past, even quite as close as the Imperial era of Rome, can be completely unintelligible, inscrutable to us moderns.
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