Predating the eruption of Vesuvius on August 24, AD 79, these are the oldest known examples of the palindrome to date. This well-preserved Sator allowed Matteo Della Corte to identify the fragment of another Sator on a ruined inscription discovered inside a house in 1925.
However, in 1936 a Sator was discovered in Pompeii on a column in the palestra, accompanied by other inscriptions: the same hand wrote SAUTRAN below and then VALE in smaller characters a second hand added? Above and ANO below. 2Numerous exegetes took this anagram as a complete certainty: it could not be coincidental, but instead constituted the proof of the Christian origin of the square.