At Rome itself they first appeared in the train of captives led up by Pompeius to the Capitol, but their captivity was of no long duration, and under the protection of Julius Cæsar, who reproduced in the West the privileges they had enjoyed under the Ptolemies and Seleucidæ in the East, they quickly multiplied, and not only appropriated a whole quarter in the capital[144], but spread into other towns of Italy. Thus the Nation, whose native land had for centuries been in the centre of the world’s power, civilization, and commerce, now, under the superintending Hand of Providence, was scattered everywhere, East and West, North and South, bearing about with them their peculiar customs and institutions, and diffusing a knowledge of the Law and the Prophets. (b) Corresponding to this wide diffusion of the Elect Nation was the _change which gradually grew up in their vernacular language_. i. The earliest dispersion in Babylonia produced a change in the older Hebrew of Judæa. The language spoken in the days of David and Solomon was gradually exchanged for the Chaldee or “Syrian tongue.” (Comp. 2 K. xviii. 26; Isai. xxxvi. 11; Dan. ii. 4.) And those who returned from the Captivity and settled in Palestine and Syria, used Chaldee Targums or paraphrases for the interpretation of the Old Hebrew Scriptures, and spake kindred Aramæan dialects, and hence were known as the Aramæan Jews. ii. After the conquests of Alexander, Greek became the language almost of the whole world[145]. It was a Greek speech that Pompeius was reading, preparatory to delivery, when he received his deathblow off the port of Alexandria. It was in Greek that Brutus conversed with his friends on the evening of the battle of Philippi. The mass of the poorer population at Rome were Greek either in descent or speech. The Jews, therefore, dispersed by the Ptolemies and the Seleucidæ over the shores of the Mediterranean, were forced to adopt the Grecian language, and to use the Septuagint translation made at Alexandria, hence their name of _Hellenists_[146], or “Jews of the Grecian speech,” which we shall find recurring so often in the Acts of the Apostles. (c) _The Rise of Synagogues._ During the captivity, when of course the Temple ritual was suspended, we gather that the devouter Jews were wont to assemble round the prophet Ezekiel and listen to his words and counsel[147] (Ezek. viii. 1; xiv. 1; xxiii. 31). Such meetings Ezra reproduced in Palestine amongst those who returned from Babylon (Ezra viii. 15; Neh. viii. 2; ix. i, &c.), and after the Maccabæan period they spread through every town and village, and in course of time gave rise to buildings called _Synagogues_, in which they might be held.