Palindrome (; "again") and ' (; "way, direction"). Palindromes date back at least to 79 AD, as a palindrome was found as a graffito at Herculaneum, a city buried by ash in that year. This palindrome, called the Sator Square, consists of a sentence written in Latin: "Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas" ("The sower Arepo holds with effort the wheels"). It is remarkable for the fact that the first letters of each word form the first word, the second letters form the second word, and so forth. Hence, it can be arranged into a word square that reads in four different
Palindrome García Lorca]] poem "¿Por qué nací?", the first movement of three in his fourth book of [[Madrigal (music)|Madrigals]]. [[Igor Stravinsky]]'s final composition, "The Owl and the Pussy Cat", is a palindrome. The first movement from [[Constant Lambert]]'s [[ballet]] "[[Horoscope (ballet)|Horoscope]]" (1938) is entitled "Palindromic Prelude". Lambert claimed that the theme was dictated to him by the ghost of [[Bernard van Dieren]], who had died in 1936. British composer [[Robert Simpson (composer)|Robert Simpson]] also composed music in the palindrome or based on palindromic themes; the slow movement of his [[Symphony No. 2 (Simpson)|Symphony No. 2]] is a palindrome, as is the