Noctilūca, a surname of Diana. She had a temple at Rome on mount Palatine, where torches were generally lighted in the night. Varro, de Lingua Latina, bk. 4.—Horace, bk. 4, ode 6, li. 38.
Nola, an ancient town of Campania, which became a Roman colony before the first Punic war. It was founded by a Tuscan, or, according to others, by an Eubœan colony. It is said that Virgil had introduced the name of Nola in his Georgics, but that, when he was refused a glass of water by the inhabitants as he passed through the city, he totally blotted it out of his poem, and substituted the word ora, in the 225th line of the second book of his Georgics. Nola was besieged by Annibal, and bravely defended by Marcellus. Augustus died there on his return from Neapolis to Rome. Bells were first invented there in the beginning of the fifth century, from which reason they have been called Nolæ, or Campanæ, in Latin. The inventor was St. Paulinus, the bishop of the place, who died A.D. 431, though many imagine that bells were known long before, and only introduced into churches by that prelate. Before his time, congregations were called to the church by the noise of wooden rattles (sacra ligna). Paterculus, bk. 1, ch. 7.—Suetonius, Augustus.—Silius Italicus, bk. 8, li. 517; bk. 12, li. 161.—Aulus Gellius, bk. 7, ch. 20.—Livy, bk. 23, chs. 14 & 39; bk. 24, ch. 13.
Nomădes, a name given to all those uncivilized people who had no fixed habitation, and who continually changed the place of their residence, to go in quest of fresh pasture for the numerous cattle which they tended. There were Nomades in Scythia, India, Arabia, and Africa. Those of Africa were afterwards called Numidians, by a small change of the letters which composed their name. Silius Italicus, bk. 1, li. 215.—Pliny, bk. 5, ch. 3.—Herodotus, bk. 1, ch. 15; bk. 4, ch. 187.—Strabo, bk. 7.—Mela, bk. 2, ch. 1; bk. 3, ch. 4.—Virgil, Georgics, bk. 3, li. 343.—Pausanias, bk. 8, ch. 43.
Nomæ, a town of Sicily. Diodorus, bk. 11.—Silius Italicus, bk. 14, li. 266.
Nomentānus, an epithet applied to Lucius Cassius as a native of Nomentum. He is mentioned by Horace as a mixture of luxury and dissipation. Horace, bk. 1, satire 2, li. 102 & alibi.
Nomentum, a town of the Sabines in Italy, famous for wine, and now called Lamentana. The dictator Quintus Servilius Priscus gave the Veientes and Fidenates battle there A.U.C. 312, and totally defeated them. Ovid, Fasti, bk. 4, li. 905.—Livy, bk. 1, ch. 38; bk. 4, ch. 22.—Virgil, Æneid, bk. 6, li. 773.
Nomii, mountains of Arcadia. Pausanias.
Nomius, a surname given to Apollo, because he fed (νεμω, pasco), the flocks of king Admetus in Thessaly. Cicero, de Natura Deorum, bk. 3, ch. 23.
Nōnācris, a town of Arcadia, which received its name from a wife of Lycaon. There was a mountain of the same name in the neighbourhood. Evander is sometimes called Nonacrius heros, as being an Arcadian by birth, and Atalanta Nonacria, as being a native of the place. Curtius, bk. 10, ch. 10.—Ovid, Fasti, bk. 5, li. 97; Metamorphoses, bk. 8, fable 10.—Pausanias, bk. 8, ch. 17, &c.
Nonius, a Roman soldier, imprisoned for paying respect to Galba’s statues, &c. Tacitus, Histories, bk. 1, ch. 56.——A Roman who exhorted his countrymen after the fatal battle of Pharsalia, and the flight of Pompey, by observing that eight standards (aquilæ) still remained in the camp, to which Cicero answered, Recte, si nobis cum graculis bellum esset.