Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/1224

1210 NOSSIS. very nearly falling into the hands of the Samnites, who, taking advantage of the civil commotions at Rome, had formed the design of invading Sicily. (Diod. Eclog. xxxvii. p. 540, ed. Wesseling, The text of Diodorus has Vd'ios 'Op€au6s, for which we ought undoubtedly to read with Wesseling, Faioy Uopgavos.) In the civil wars Norbanus espoused the Marian party, and was consul in b. c. 83 with Scipio Asiaticus. In this year Sulla crossed over from Greece to Italy, and marched from Brundisium into Campania, where Norbanus was waiting for him, on the Vulturaus at the foot of Mount Tifata, not far from Capua. Sulla at first sent deputies to Norbanus under the pretext of treating respecting a peace, but evidently with the design of tampering with his troops ; but they could not effect their pur- })ose, and returned to Sulla after being insulted and maltreated by the other side. Thereupon a general engagement ensued, the issue of which was not long doubtful ; the raw levies of Norbanus were unable to resist the first charge of Sulla's A'eterans, and fled in all directions, and it was not till they reached the walls of Capua that Norbanus was able to rally them again. Six or seven thou- sand of his men fell in this battle, while Sulla's loss is said to have been only seventy. Appian, contrary' to all tlie other authorities, places this battle near Canusium in Apulia, but it is not im- probable, as Drumann has conjectured (Geschiclde lioms, vol. ii. p. 459), that he wrote Casilinum, a town on the Vulturnus. In the following year, B. c. 82, Norbanus joined the consul Carbo in Cis- alpine Gaul, but their united forces were entirely defeated by Metellus Pius. [Metellus, No. 19.] This may be said to have given the death-blovvto the Marian party in Italy. Desertion from their ranks rapidly followed, and Albinovanus, who had been entrusted with the command of Ariminum, invited Norbanus and his principal officers to a banquet. Norbanus suspected treachery, and declined the invitation ; the rest accepted it and were murdered. Norbanus succeeded in making his escape from Italy, and fled to Rhodes ; but his person having been demanded by Sulla, he killed himself in the middle of the market-place, while the Rhodians were consulting whether they should obey the com- mands of the dictator. (Appian, B. C. i. 82, 84, 86, 91 ; Liv. IJpit. 85 ; Veil. Pat. ii. 25 ; Plut. Suit. 27 ; Oros. v. 20 ; Flor. iii. 21. § 18.) 2. Norbanus Flaccus. [Flaccus.] 3. Appius Norbanus, who defeated Antonius in the reign of Domitian, is more usually called Appius Maximus. [Maximus, p. 986, b.] 4. Norbanus, praefectus praetorio under Do- mitian, was privy to the death of that emperor. (Dion Cass. Ixvii. 15.) 5. Norbanus Licinianus, one of the infamous servants of Domitian, was banished {relegatm) in the reign of Trajan. (Plin. Ep. iii. 9.) 6. Norbanus, banished by Commodus. (Lam- prid. Commod. 4.) NO'RTIA or NU'RTIA,an Etruscan divinity, who was worshipped at Volsinii, where a nail was driven every year into the wall of her temple, for the purpose of marking the number of years. (Liv. vii. 3 ; Juvenal, x. 74.) [L. S.] NOSSIS, a Greek poetess, of Locri in Southern Italy, lived about B.C. 310, and is the author of twelve epigrams of considerable beauty, extant in the Greek Anthology. From these we learn that her mothers name was Theuphila, and that she NOVATIANUS. had a daughter called Melinna. Three of her epi- grams were published for the first time by Bent- ley ; and the whole twelve are given by J. C. Wolf, Poetriarum ccto Fragm. &c., Hamb. 1734, by A. Schneider, Poetriarum Graec. Fragm. Giessae, 1802, by Brunck, Anal. vet. Poet. Gr. vol. i., and by Jacobs, A7ith. Graec. vol. i. (Comp. Fabric. Bibl. Graec. vol, ii. p. 133 ; Bentley, Dis- sertation upon iJie Epistles of Phalaris^ pp. 256, 257, Lond. 1777.) NOTHIPPUS, a tragic poet, with whom we are only acquainted through a fragment of the Morirae of the comic poet Hermippus, who describes Nothippus as an enormous eater. (Athen. viii. p. 344, c, d.) NOVATIA'NUS, according to Philostorgius, whose statement, however, has not been generally received with confidence, was a native of Phrygia. From the accounts given of his baptism, which his enemies alleged was irregularly administered in consequence of his having been prevented by sickness from receiving imposition of hands, it would appear that in early life he was a gentile ; but the assertion found in many modern works that he was devoted to the stoic philosophy is not supported by the testimony of any ancient writer. There can be no doubt that he became a presbyter of the church at Rome, that he insisted upon the rigorous and perpetual exclusion of the Lapsi, the weak brethren who had fiiUen away from the faith under the terrors of persecution, and that upon the election of Cornelius [Cornelius], who advocated more charitable opinions, to the Roman see in Jane, A. d. 251, about sixteen months after the martyrdom of Fabianus, he disowned the authority of the new pontiff, was himself consecrated bishop by a rival party, was condemned by the council held in the autumn of the same j'ear, and after a vain struggle to maintain his position was obliged to give way, and became the founder of a new sect, who from him derived the name of Novatians. We are told, moreover, that he was a man of un- sociable, treacherous, and wolf-like disposition, that his ordination was performed by three simple illiterate prelates from an obscure corner of Italy, whom he gained to his purpose by a most disrepu- table artifice, that these poor men quickly perceived, confessed, and lamented their error, and that those persons who had at first espoused his cause quickly returned to their duty, leaving the schismatic almost alone. We must observe that these ad- verse representations proceed from his bitter enemy Cornelius, being contained in a long letter from that pope to Fabius, of Antioch, preserved in Eusebius, that they bear evident marks of personal rancour, and that they are contradicted by tb.e circumstance that Novatianus was commissioned in 250 by the Roman clergy to write a letter in their name to Cyprian which is still extant, by the respect and popularity which he unquestionably enjoyed after his assumption of the episcopal dig- nity, even among those who did not recognise his authority, and by the fact that a numerous and devoted band of followers espousing his cause formed a separate communion, which spread over the whole Christian world, and flourished for more than two hundred years. The career of Novatia- nus, after the termination of his struggle with Cornelius, is unknown ; but we are told by So- crates {H.E. iv. 28) that he suffered death under Valerian ; and from Pacianus, who flourished in the