There is a large body of peer-reviewed academic research published by classical scholars over the last century on the Sator Square. Supplementing this are various essays by classical scholars to help non-academic readers and/or clarify their own public position on the square's origin. However, there is also a considerable volume of non-academic work on the Sator Square published in books or blogs that are unsuitable for this article, and particularly non-academic sources that seek to support WP:FRINGE theories on the origin and purpose of the object; these will be removed.
Useful sources
Because of the scale of academic papers published on the Sator square over the last century, a number of academics have published papers to catalog and review the body of academic research at various times. A noted contemporary version is a paper published in 2003 by American academic Rose Mary Sheldon in the journal Cryptologia and is available to read online: The Sator rebus: An unsolved cryptogram?, and is a useful guide for Wikipedia editors.
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You are completely right, Markovich does not have "the". I added it in the citation ino order to make clear that, obviously, while M. intended "checks" as a verb, he also intended "toils and tortures" not as verbs (the commas suggested that) but instead as the object of "checks": Latin words can only be translated in this sense.
I see that you also tried to solve the ambiguity, using "keeps in check" instead of "checks" - but this also is not respectful of Markovich's original text... What do you think of "The sower Horus/Harpocrates checks [the] toils and tortures"? I find this would be accurate enough while not inducing readers in any misunderstanding...
Or, "The sower Horus/Harpocrates checks [=keeps in check the] toils and tortures" which is perhaps better English?
Signo (talk) 13:50, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Moving this here from my talk page. Aszx5000 (talk) 18:46, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Signo, I would do the former (add [the]), as it is less open to any claim that you have interpreted it as such? It probably is always open to such a claim as I don't think Markovich elaborated on his sentence, however, it would not be unreasonable imho. Aszx5000 (talk) 18:52, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The first sentence in this section says "The word AREPO is a hapax legomenon (i.e. it appears nowhere else in Latin literature)." Nothing wrong with that.
Further down it says "French historian Jerome Carcopino interpreted AREPO as the Greek ἅπαξ, and believed that it came from the Gaulish word for a 'plough'". This looks confused to me, since "ἅπαξ" literally is the word "hapax", meaning "once", and "hapax legomenon" is the transliteration of the original Greek phrase "ἅπαξ λεγόμενον", meaning "said once". I sincerely doubt that Jerome Carcopino interpreted AREPO as the Greek word ἅπαξ, but I'll leave that for someone else to check.
At any rate it looks to me like it should just read "French historian Jerome Carcopino believed that AREPO came from the Gaulish word for a 'plough'" and leave the Greek out of it. Chuck Entz (talk) 09:57, 25 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That makes sense to me; the current sentence is just a repeat of the concept of a hapax without realizing that it has already been introduced (and thus confusion to re-state under its Greek name). I have made the change you suggested. thanks for that. Aszx5000 (talk) 19:29, 28 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
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