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 a circle at night and are consumed by fire") describes the behavior of moths. It is likely that this palindrome is from medieval rather than ancient times. The second word, borrowed from Greek, should properly be spelled "gyrum". Byzantine Greeks often inscribed the palindrome, "Wash [the] sins, not only [the] face" (""Nipson anomēmata mē monan opsin"", engraving ""ps"" with the single Greek letter Ψ, psi), on baptismal fonts; a variant, also a palindrome, replaces the plural ("sins") by the singular ("sin"). This practice was continued in many English churches. Examples include the font at St. Mary's Church, Nottingham and also