The chief peculiarity of the Syrian rite, as contradis- tinguished from the Greek, consists in its liturgy, and the language of that liturgy, which is Syriac, and with which the people, and, in many cases, the priests, are en- tirely unacquainted. The liturg}' is known as the Lit- urgy of St. James. The Syrians agree with the Greeks in tlie use of unleavened bread, in administering com- munion under botli heads, in permitting the marriage of priests (provided the\- marry before ordination), and in administering the unction of confirmation at the same time with baptism, even to infants.
The Christian community of Syria may at present be divided into four classes: the Maronites, the Greeks (who are also called Melchites), the Monophysites, who are called Jacobites, and the primitive Syrian Christians (not Maronites) who are in communion with Rome. This last-named community forms the small remnant of the ancient Syrian Church which remained orthodox during the controversy on the incarnation, at the time of the general lapse into Monophysitism. To these are to be added the Christians of the Latin rite. The Maronites number about 150,000; the Greeks are said to be about 50,000; the Jacobites of Syria and of Armenia Proper are said to reckon together about 40,000 families, of whom, however, but a small proportion (probably scarce- ly 10,000 in all) can be set down to the account of the Syrian Church. The non-Maronite Syrians who follow their national rite, but are in communion with Eome, are supposed to amount to about 4000. The resident Latins are chietly members of the religious orders who from immemorial time have possessed convents in the Holy Land, and European Catholics who have settled perma- nently or for a time at Jerusalem, Beirut, and Damas- cus. None of these can in any way be regarded as be- longing to the Syrian Church. It may be well to add that the belief, and, in most particulars, the disciplinary practice, of these several classes coincide substantially with those respectively of the same communities in the other churches of the East. All (with the exception of the Maronites and the few United Syrians) reject the supremacy of the Roman see. The Syrians of the Greek communion reject the double procession of the Holy Ghost; and the Jacobites firmly maintain their old tenet of Eutychianism. Among them all are to be found monks and religious females. All enforce celibacj' on their bishops, and refuse to priests the privilege of con- tracting a second marriage, or of marrying after ordina- tion. The practice of fasting prevails among all alike. They receive and practice the invocation of saints and prayers for the dead, and the use of painted, although not of graven, images. Many particulars regarding them are to be gleaned from the memoirs of recent missionaries of the several deuomiuations, among which
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the letters published from time to time by the French Society for the Propagation of the Faith, altlioiigh nat- urally tinged with some sectarian coloring, are partic- ularlv full and interesting. — Cliambeis's Encyclop. s. v. See Etheridge, Hist., LUurrjn, etc., of Syrian Churches (Lond. 18-lC) ; Benin, Traditions 0/ Syi: Churches (ibid. 1871).
Syrinx, in Greek mythology-, was a daughter of the river-god Lado, who, when pursued on account of her beauty by Pan, prayed to her father for relief, and was changed into a reed. Pan cut some stalks from it, join- ed them together with wax, and used it, in the form known to us as Pan's- pipe, in remembrance of her (Ovid, Metam. i, GOO).
Syrna, in Greek mythology, was a daughter of the Carian king Dami\;thus. She fell from the roof of her house, and was restored by the art of Podalirius, who then married her, and built the city named after her in Caria.
Sy'ro-Phoeni'cian CEvpoipoli'trjaa v. r. "Zvpoipoi- viKKiact), a general name (Mark vii, 2(;) of a (female) inhabitant of the northern portion of Phoenicia, which was popularlj' called Si/?-o-Pha:nicia, by reason of its proximity to Syria and its absorption by conquest into that kingdom. See Puckxicia. The name is made es- pecially interesting to the scriptural student on account of the woman who besought our Lord in behalf of her afflicted daughter, and the miraculous cure wrought by him on the latter. Matthew calls the woman a woman of Canaan (xv, 22), being in respect to her nationality, in common with the Phoenicians, a descendant of Ca- naan ; Mark describes her as " a Greek, a Syrophoenici- an by nation" (vii, 26), but Rosenmliller rightly observes that the Jews called all Gentiles Greeks ('£XX»';i'fc), just as the Greeks called all strangers barbarians. She was therefore a Greek, or Gentile, and a native of that part of Syria which belonged to Phoenicia. We have a curious instance of the interchange made in respect to the terms Canaanites and Phamicians, of an earlier kind, in the case of Shaul, the son of Simeon, who is said in Genesis (xlvi, 10), according to the Sept., to be the son of a Phoenician woman, and in Exodus (vi, 15), to be the son of a Canaanitish woman. The case of the Syrophcenician woman was a very singular one, both on account of the strong faith manifested on her part, and the exercise of divine grace and power in mi- raculous working b}' Christ beyond the proper sphere of his personal ministrations. In the latter respect it stands in a sort of affinity to the cases in Old-Test, his- tory referred to by our Lord in Luke iv, 26, 27. — Fair- bainl.