inscriptions. The cathedral was burnt down by the French in 1789 and restored in 1831. A mile and a half E.N.E. is the Romanesque church of S Elia, founded about A.D. 1000, with frescoes of the period. It contains a pulpit of the time of Pope Gregory IV. (827–844), the sculptures of which are scattered about the church (F. Mazzanti in Nuovo Bollettino d’Archeologia Cristiana, 1896, 34).
Nepet had become Roman before 386 B.C., when Livy speaks of it and Sutrium as the keys of Etruria. In that year it was surrendered to the Etruscans and recovered by the Romans, who beheaded the authors of its surrender. It became a colony in 383 B.C. It was among the twelve Latin colonies that refused further help to Rome in 209 B.C. After the Social War it became a municipium. It is hardly mentioned in imperial times, except as a station on the road (Via Amerina) which diverged from the Via Cassia near the modern Settevene and ran to Ameria and Tuder. In the 8th century A.D. it was for a short while the seat of a dukedom.
See G. Dennis, Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria (London, 1883, i. 82). (T. As.)
NEPOMUK (or Pomuk), JOHN OF, the national saint of
Bohemia. It is necessary to distinguish between the John of
Nepomuk of history and the legendary one. In 1393 a dispute
arose between King Wenceslaus IV. of Bohemia and the archbishop
of Prague, John of Jenzenstein. Wenceslaus, wishing to
found a new bishopric in south-western Bohemia, determined to
seize the revenues of the abbey of Kladrub as soon as the aged
abbot Raček should die. The archbishop opposed this plan,
and by his orders his vicar-general, John of Pomuk—son of a
German named Wölfel, a citizen of Pomuk—advised the monks
to elect a new abbot immediately after Raček’s death. This
greatly incensed the king, who summoned the archbishop and
some of his clergy—among whom was Pomuk—to appear before
him. He ordered them to be immediately arrested, and though
the archbishop escaped his four companions—among them
Pomuk—were seized and subjected to cruel torture. They were
ordered to abandon the archbishop. Three of them consented,
but Pomuk, who refused to submit and was already on the point
of death, was carried to the bridge of Prague and thrown into
the Vltava. It is difficult to connect this historical event with
the legend of St John of Nepomuk, who was canonized by the
church of Rome in 1729, mainly by the influence of the Jesuits,
who hoped that this new cult would obliterate the memory of
Hus. The Austrian chronicler Thomas Ebendorffer of Haselbach,
who lived two generations later, first states that it was
reported that King Wenceslaus had ordered that the confessor
of his queen—an office that John of Pomuk never held—should
be thrown into the Vltava because he would not reveal the secret
of confession. The story is afterwards told in greater detail by
the untrustworthy Bohemian historian Wenceslaus Hajek. It
appears certain that the person canonized in 1729 was not the
historical John of Pomuk or Nepomuk.
See A. H. Wratislaw, Life, Legend and Canonization of St John Nepomuk (1873), a valuable work founded on the best Bohemian authorities; also A. Frind, Der geschichtliche Heilige Johann von Nepomuk (1861); O. Abel, Die Legende vom heiligen Johann von Nepomuk (1855); and particularly vol. iii. of W. W. Tomek’s History of the Town of Prague (Czech) (12 vols., Prague, 1855–1901).
NEPOS, CORNELIUS (c. 99–24 B.C.), Roman historian, friend
of Catullus, Cicero and Atticus, was born in Upper Italy (perhaps
at Verona or Ticinum). He wrote: Chronica, an epitome of
universal history; Exempla, a collection of anecdotes after the
style of Valerius Maximus; letters to Cicero; lives of Cato the
elder and Cicero; and De viris illustribus, parallel lives of
distinguished Romans and foreigners, in sixteen books. One section
of this voluminous work (De excellentibus ducibus exterarum
gentium, more commonly known as Vitae excellentium imperatorum)
and the biographies of Cato and Atticus from another
(De Latinis historicis) have been preserved. Erotic poems and
a geographical treatise are also attributed to him. Nepos is not
altogether happy in the subjects of his biographies, and he writes
rather as a panegyrist than as a biographer, although he can
rebuke his own countrymen on occasion. The Lives contain
many errors (especially in chronology), but supply information
not found elsewhere. The language is as a rule simple and
correct. The Lives were formerly attributed to Aemilius Probus
of the 4th century A.D.; but the view maintained by Lambinus
(in his famous edition, 1569)—that they are all the work of Nepos—is
now generally accepted. A dedicatory epigram written by
Probus to the emperor Theodosius and inserted after the life of
Hannibal, was the origin of the mistake. This dedication, if
genuine, would only prove that Probus copied (and perhaps modified
and abridged) the work. In modern times G. F. Unger (Der
sogenannte C.N., 1881) has attempted to prove that the author
was Hyginus, but his theory has not been favourably received.
Editions of the Lives (especially selections) are extremely numerous; text by E. O. Winstedt (Oxford, 1904), C. L. Roth (1881), C. G. Cobet (1881), C. Halm and A. Fleckeisen (1889), with lexicon for school use; with notes, O. Browning and W. R. Inge (1888), J. C. Rolfe (U.S. 1894), A. Weidner and J. Schmidt (1902), C. Erbe (1892), C. Nipperdey and B. Lupus (ed. maj., 1879, school ed., 1895), J. Siebelis and O. Stange (1897).
NEPOS, JULIUS, the last but one of the Roman emperors
of the West (474–475). He was a nephew of Marcellinus, prince
of Dalmatia, whom he succeeded in his principality. After
the death of Olybrius the throne of the West remained vacant
for some months, during which Italy was abandoned to barbarians.
Being connected by marriage with Leo I., emperor of
the East, he was selected by him to succeed Olybrius on the
Western throne, and proclaimed at Ravenna. After capturing
his rival Glycerius, who had been nominated by the army in
473, at the mouth of the Tiber, he was recognized as emperor
in Rome, Italy and Gaul. The only event of the reign of Nepos
was the inglorious cession to the Visigoths of the province of
Auvergne. In 475 Orestes, father of Augustulus, afterwards
the last emperor of the West, raised the standard of revolt and
marched against Nepos at Ravenna. The emperor fled into
Dalmatia, and continued to reside at Salona until his assassination
by two of his own officers in 480, possibly at the instigation
of Glycerius, who had been compelled to enter the church and
had been appointed bishop of Salona.
See Tillemont, Hist. des empereurs, vi.; Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ch. 36.
NEPTUNE (Lat. Neptuntus), an Italian god, of unknown
origin and meaning, paired with Salacia, possibly the goddess
of the salt water. At an early date (399 B.C.) he was identified
with the Greek Poseidon (q.v.), when the Sibylline books ordered
a lectisternium in his honour (Livy v. 13). His festival,
Neptunalia, at which tents were made from the branches of trees,
was celebrated on the 23rd of July, and his temple, containing a
famous marine group by Scopas, stood near the Circus Flaminius.
In earlier times it was the god Fortunus who was thanked for naval
victories; but Sextus Pompeius called himself son of Neptune,
and Agrippa dedicated to Neptune a temple (Basilica Neptuni) in
the Campus Martius in honour of the naval victory of Actium.
NEPTUNE, in astronomy, the outermost known planet of our solar system; its symbol is ♆. Its distance from the sun is a little more than 30 astronomical units, i.e. 30 times the mean distance of the earth from the sun, or about 2,796,000,000 m. It deviates greatly from Bode’s law, which would give a distance of nearly 39. Its orbit is more nearly circular than that of any other major planet, Venus excepted. Its time of revolution is 165 years. Being of the 8th stellar magnitude it is invisible to the naked eye. In a small telescope it cannot be distinguished from a fixed star, but in a large one it is seen to have a disk about 2·3″ in diameter, of a pale bluish hue. No features and no change of appearance can be detected upon it, so that observation can give no indication of its rotation. Both its optical aspect and the study of its spectrum seem to show that it resembles Uranus. Its spectrum shows marked absorption-bands in the red and yellow, indicating an atmosphere of great depth of which hydrogen would seem to be a constituent. (See Planet.)
Only a single satellite of Neptune is yet known. This was discovered by William Lassell soon after the discovery of the planet. Its period of revolution is 5d. 21 h. Its motion is retrograde, in a plane making an angle of about 35° with the orbit of the planet. This was the first case of retrograde motion found in any of the
