fragment in a play of the Roman poet Plautus, whereof the scene is laid in Carthage, are the only relics left us of the idiom of that queenly city.
The earliest records of Aramaic speech are the so-called Chaldee passages found in some of the later books of the Hebrew Bible (a single verse in Jeremiah, and longer passages in Esdras and Daniel). Other products of the literary use by the Jews of the same language are the Targums, or paraphrases of Scripture, dating from about the time of Christ, and the Talmuds, of the fourth and fifth centuries. But in the second century, with the translation of the whole Bible into the language of Syria (usually called the Peshito version), begins an important Christian Syriac literature, of which considerable portions are still preserved to us. It flourished especially between the fourth and ninth centuries. Besides the valuable historical information, touching the early ages of the Christian church, which it records, it played an important part in transmitting to the Arabs the literature, science, and philosophy of the Greeks. Its career was brought to a close, and even the Syriac idiom itself nearly crowded out of existence, by the rise and rapid extension of the Arabic, in the centuries after Mohammed. But the ancient Syriac is still the sacred dialect of the feeble bodies of Christians in Asia which represent the Syriac church; and its modern representatives, much corrupted in form and of mixed material, are even now spoken by a few scattered communities. With one of these communities, the Nestorians of Orumiah and its vicinity—scanty remains of a sect which once sent its missionaries into the remotest regions of Asia, into India, Mongolia, and China—the labours of American missionaries have lately made our public well acquainted. A modern Syriac literature is growing up once more under their auspices.
Besides these two Aramaic literatures, the one Jewish and the other Christian, it is believed that there has existed another, of native origin and of character more truly national; but it is now lost, doubtless beyond recovery. Traditions of ancient Chaldean learning attach themselves to the name Nabatean, and one or two curious books have been
