Collated with parallel Passages of the Hebrew Scriptures. 21 



child in the Mencechmi, we find the expressions, aberravit a patre in the pro- 

 logue of that play ; and in the fifth Act, section 9, deerrare a patre ; the cir- 

 cumstance of straying being in both cases connected with that of abduction. 



The Hebrew equivalent for stray is well known to be nyn, thyh. In the 

 participial form, straying, and with the Chaldee article prefixed nynn'> iththoeh, 

 or ithoeh. In this form the meaning would be " filium errabundum fratris," 

 the stray son of my brother. 



In the parable of the lost sheep, as given in St. Matthew's Gospel, " the one 

 that went astray" is rendered in the Hebrew Testament nyn ^^<. But in the 15th 

 chapter of Job, we find the root in the passive rendered seductus, which in the 

 passive participle, pahul form, would be ''lyn thui, decoyed ; and in the Chaldee 

 dialect would become i^yn thii ; and with the article prefixed, (whether the 

 Chaldee rv or the silent n) ithii.* Now this is the very Punic word which, in its 

 position between ben and ahh, was noticed above, as requiring elucidation, and 

 which turns out to mean in that, its proper grammatical place, " the stray, or 

 kidnapped son of my brother," nx "^yn rv ]1 TV yth ben ithii ahh. 



Doedin Bynuthii, in^^2 |nn Dodain Benothai, my beloved daughters. 



The little trait of boyish vagrancy and decoyed childhood which we have just 

 adverted to, as expressed in the prologue, and thereby detected in the untranslated 

 part of the monologue, as it gives an air of individuality and verisimilitude to the 

 poetic picture in the latter, so it serves by the undesigned coincidence between it 

 and the former, strongly to sustain the truth of our philology. Now, as in that 

 clause, the adjunct " abditivus" estray or decoyed, so characteristic of the ram- 

 bling boy, was found wanting in the Latin version of the Punic, but by the help 

 of the prologue detected in the Punic itself; so in the clause we are next about 

 to consider, we may suspect it owing to the Latin being defective, that we find 



* Where the same consonant ends one syllable and begins the next without a vowel between them 

 one only of those consonants is retained in the pronouncing and in spelling. And wherever in the 

 spelling we find the consonant doubled, the two consonants must be read as with a vowel, or rather 

 apostrophe between them, making a syllable, thus : "'"'yn n** ^ yth-thii, is pronounced and spelled 

 " ithii" in the third line ; but imbb'»J& = syl'luhu, in line fourth is pronounced so that " yl'lu" 

 makes three syllables and " I'lu" two. 



