Editing Sator Square (section)

===Roman word puzzle===

There is considerable contemporary academic support for the theory that the square originated as a Roman-era word puzzle.<ref name=MRS/><ref name=Baines/><ref name=MOD/> Italian historian [[Arsenio Frugoni]] found it written in the margin of the ''Carme delle scolte modenesi'' beside the Roma-Amor palindrome,<ref name=MRS/> and Italian classicist [[Margherita Guarducci]] noted it was similar to the ROMA OLIM MILO AMOR two-dimensional acrostic word puzzle that was also found at Pompeii (see [[wikt:oiim|Wiktionary]] for details on the Pompeiian graffito), and at Ostia and Bolonia.<ref name=MRS/> Similarly, another ROTAS-form square scratched into a Roman-era wall in the basement of the [[Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore]], was found alongside the Roma-Amor, and the Roma-Summus-Amor, palindromes.<ref name=Basilica/> Duncan Fishwick noted the "composition of palindromes was, in fact, a pastime of Roman landed gentry".<ref name=":0"/>  American classical [[Epigraphy|epigraphist]] Rebecca Benefiel, noted that by 2012, Pompeii had yielded more than 13,000 separate inscriptions and that the house of Publius Paquius Proculus (where a square was found) had more than 70 pieces of graffiti alone.<ref name=RB>{{cite book | title=The Muse at Play: Riddles and Wordplay in Greek and Latin Poetry | pages=65–79 | first=Rebecca R. | last=Benefiel | doi=10.1515/9783110270617.65 | chapter=Magic Squares, Alphabet Jumbles, Riddles and More: The Culture of Word-Games among the Graffiti of Pompeii | publisher=[[De Gruyter]] | access-date=15 September 2022 | url=https://www.academia.edu/5111444 | date=2012| isbn=978-3-11-027000-6 }}</ref>

A 1969 computer study by Charles Douglas Gunn started with a Roma-Amor square and found 2,264 better versions, of which he considered the Sator square to be the best.<ref name=MRS/>  The square's origin as a word puzzle solved the problem of AREPO (a word that appears nowhere else in classical writing), as being a necessary component to complete the palindrome.<ref name=MOD/>

Fishwick still considered this interpretation as unproven and clarified that the apparent discovery of the Roma-Amor palindrome written beside the 1954 discovery of a square on a tile at Aquincum, was incorrectly translated (if anything it supported the square as a charm).<ref name=":0"/> Fishwick, and others, consider the key failing of the Roman puzzle theory of origin is the lack of any explanation as to why the square would later become so strongly associated with Christianity, and with being a medieval charm.<ref name=":0"/><ref name=MOD/><ref name=Conimbriga/>  Some argue that this can be bridged if considered as a [[Pythagoreanism|Pythagorean]]-[[Stoicism|Stoic]] puzzle creation.<ref name=MRS/><ref name=ENC/>
 
In 2018, Megan O'Donnell argued that the square is less of a pure word puzzle but more a piece of Latin Roman [[Graffito (archaeology)|graffito]] that should be read ''figuratively'' as a wheel (i.e. the ROTAS), and that the textual-visual interplay had parallels with other forms of graffito found in Pompeii, some of which later became adopted as charms.<ref name=MOD/>