structural:reformatting, stylistic:style_transfer
Legacy

The term Chaldean was still in use at the time of Cicero (106–43 BC) long after the Chaldeans had disappeared. In one of his speeches he mentioned "Chaldean astrologers ", and he spoke of them more than once in his De Divinatione. Other classical Latin writers who speak of them as distinguished for their knowledge of astronomy and astrology are Pliny the Elder, Valerius Maximus, Aulus Gellius, Cato the Elder, Lucretius, and Juvenal. Horace in his Carpe diem ode speaks of the "Babylonian calculations" (Babylonii numeri), the horoscopes of astrologers consulted regarding the future.

In the late antiquity, a variant of Aramaic that was used in some books of the Bible was misnamed as Chaldean by Jerome of Stridon. That inaccurate usage continued down the centuries in Western Europe, and it was still customary during the nineteenth century, until the misnomer was corrected by scholars. In West Asian, Greek and Hebraic sources, however, the term for the language spoken in Mesopotamia was commonly "Assyrian" and later also "Syriac". Accordingly, in the earliest recorded "Western" mentions of the Christians of what is now Iraq and nearby countries, "Chaldean" is used with reference to their language. In 1220/1, Jacques de Vitry wrote that "they denied that Mary was the Mother of God and claimed that Christ existed in two persons. They consecrated leavened bread and used the 'Chaldean' (Syriac) language". In the fifteenth century the term "Chaldeans" was first applied specifically to Assyrians living in Cyprus who entered a union with Rome, and no longer merely with reference to their language but the name of a new church.