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 slow movement of his [[String Quartet No. 1 (Simpson)|String Quartet No. 1]]. His hour-long [[String Quartet No. 9 (Simpson)|String Quartet No. 9]] consists of thirty-two variations and a fugue on a palindromic theme of Haydn (from the minuet of his Symphony No. 47). All of Simpson's thirty-two variations are themselves palindromic. "Hin und Zurück" ("There and Back": 1927) is an operatic 'sketch' (Op. 45a) in one scene by Paul Hindemith, with a German libretto by Marcellus Schiffer. It is essentially a dramatic palindrome. Through the first half, a tragedy unfolds between two lovers, involving jealousy, murder and suicide. Then, in