With the new Christopher Nolan film TENET soon to arrive, I thought I would share some details on the SATOR square. A thread in ten parts. 1/10

The SATOR square is an ancient Latin word square containing a five-word palindrome, with the entire sentence being able to be read right to left or left to right. 2/10

Here is the oldest known version of the SATOR square, found among the graffiti of Pompeii. Other examples have been found across the old Roman empire, from modern Syria to the United Kingdom. 3/10

So what does it mean? An exact translation hangs on the interpretation of OPERA, which I choose to take as ablative. OPERA means something like work, labour or effort. In the ablative case, something like ‘with effort’ or ‘with difficulty’. 4/10

SATOR is the subject of the sentence, in the nominative case. It means SOWER, in an agricultural sense. But it can have a more mystical bent; in the Aeneid, Virgil refers to Jupiter as the sower of persons and of gods (hominum sator atque deorum). 5/10

TENET is the verb of the sentence, a third person singular present. It means he, she or it holds. Its subject is SATOR, so we get ‘the sower holds...’. What do they hold? This sentence is begging for an object. 6/10

We get the object in ROTAS, a 1st Declension accusative plural. A ROTA is a wheel - hence rotation - so the sowers holds the wheels. In a literal sense, we might imagine the wheels of a plough. Others have seen the turning wheels of fate. 7/10

APERO is usually taken to be a name. Not know elsewhere, it was perhaps invented simply to fit the palindrome. Some have seen in it Harpocrates : Ἁρποκράτης - a Greek god of silence adopted in Alexandria, modelled on the Egyptian god of Horace as Child (Har-pa-khered). 8/10

If we take it at its most literal then, we get something like THE SOWER AREPO HOLDS THE WHEELS WITH EFFORT. Below is an image of a Roman era wheeled plough. 9/10

There are other interesting theories, such as the prominent positions of the letters S - T - R - N being a reference to the god SaTuRN, or the cross pattern invoking early Christianity, but I’ll leave you to discover these for yourself. gratias maximas tibi hoc legenti. 10/10