1888. | NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 181 
tamia.. The Samaritan dialect and the Samaritan race were the 
results. This race is now reduced to about 150 souls, all of 
whom are found in the city of Nablts, the ancient Shechem. 
This sharply characterized race and language is one of the many 
remarkable survivals preserved in this unique land. 
The next break occurred in the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, 586 
B. C., when a similar though less general fate overtook the 
Jews. By the restoration, in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, 
a much purer Hebrew stock was brought back than that which 
peopled Samaria. This stock seems to have gained the control 
of Galilee, and little by little curtailed the influence, and dimin- 
ished the numbers of the Samaritans, until in the time of Christ 
the latter seem to have occupied only a portion of the small 
district of Samaria. 
The subjugation of all western Asia by Cyrus, about 530 B.C., 
was not followed by an infusion of Persian elements into the 
population of Syria and Palestine, for it seemed to be the policy 
of the Persians to interpose a series of tributary Semitic states 
between their empire and that of Egypt. 
When Alexander conquered Phoenicia, and his successors 
became the founders of empires in northern Syria and Egypt, 
the Greek race impressed itself on the people of the Phcenician 
coast, and of the valley of the Orontes. Greek art prevailed 
throughout Celesyria and the trans-Jordanic region; and in 
Graeco-Roman days were erected the wonderful structures of 
Baalbek, Palmyra, Hauran, Gilead and Palestine. Yet the 
Greek language seldom did more than give duplicate names to 
places, which held tenaciously to the old Semitic names as well; 
and when the Greco-Roman civilization gave place to the 
Arabian, the ancient names reappeared in an Arabic form, and 
generally survive to the present day. It is plain that Greek 
never became the language of the people, still less Latin, and 
that they have retained their Aramaic race peculiarities through 
all the checkered experiences of their history, to the present 
day. 
It is not true, however, as stated in the Encyclopedia Bri- 
tannica, that the Greek race has left no traces of its physical in- 
fluence. On the contrary, many of the Christian inhabitants of 
the Pheenician coast have the straight nose, characteristic fore- 
head, and general physiognomy of the best types of the ancient 
Greeks. Many of their women are extraordinarily beautiful. 
The Roman conquest left less of race impress in Syria and 
Palestine than would have been inferred from its long dominion 
there. When, however, it is considered that the Greek half of 
the Roman empire was the nearest, it may be said that the 
