38 The Rev. J. Hamilton on the Punic Passa<j^e in Plautus. 



'o'- 



ahel, for his mother." Before Vcant comes in the Libyan " /a," worn out, 

 afflicted. It is a word common both in Hebrew, Chaldee, and Syriac. It occurs 

 as fatigued and worn out after a journey and after a flight. In the latter con- 

 nexion in Deuteronomy, xxv. ly*? ; in the former, in reference to our Lord being 



T 



weaiy, lah, T\vh, after his journey, (John, iv. 6.) There occurs in the Talmud 

 the proverbial expression, " non laborans non comedens," like that of the 

 apostle, " He that does not work, should not eat," Qn^ ab *'N'7 S^^ '■> iii ^^i^ 

 expression the Chaldee for laborans is "•x'?.* 



The natural pathos of this parenthetic expression of despondence is obvious. 

 It is introduced, moreover, by a beautiful and artful junctura in the Libyan 

 Invocation, which, as we shall see when we come to explicate that passage, 

 includes the traveller with the city as under the divine tutelary protection. 



The Invocation. 



The Plautlne Latin translation of the Invocation is at once spirited and 

 literal, and properly rendered into Hebrew- Chaldee, gives the Punic line of 

 which it purports to be the translation. And in the greater part of the line in- 

 terpreters agree. Little, therefore, need be said by way of explication, but to 

 remark that from this perfectly literal Latin translation Bochart, misled, it would 

 seem, by his own erudition, elaborately deviated. Having discovered in the 

 Arabic language a word corah similar in meaning to the Greek x^P^^ ^^^ 

 somewhat similar in sound and spelling to the Punic corath, he was tempted to 

 adopt the reading corah, and the rendering regionem, in defiance alike of the 

 Punic reading, which is not corah, but corath, and of the Latin rendering of 

 Plautus, which is not regionem, but urhem, the well-known meaning of corath 

 in the Hebrew Scriptures. A word, than which none can be more In keeping 

 in the mouth of a native of Carthage, and a worshipper by descent and religion 

 of the tutelary god Melc- Carth, and engaged In the act of worshipping the tute- 

 lary divinities of the place. 



* nN7 Idh, sesms obviously the derivation of the Latin, lassus ; French, las, &c. 



