A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. By various writers. Ed. by William Smith. Illustrated by numerous engravings on wood.

1188 NICIAS. NICIAS.
Macedonia. - He seems to have been in command 1. Against the iaL7Tr')s of Philoponus. 2. Against
at Pella. When the fortunes of Perseus appeared Severus, the Eutychian. 3. Against the Pagans.
desperate, in a moment of bewilderment he gave He is not to be confounded with NICAEAS.
directions to Nicias to throw his treasures into the (Cave, Hist. Lit. Sc. Ec. vol. i. p. 695; Fabric. Bibi.
sea, and to Andronicus to. burn his fleet. The Graec. vol. x. p. 494.) His writings are not
former executed the commands of the king, though extant. [W. M. G.]
a large part of the treasure was afterwards recovered. NI'CIAS (Ncias), the name of at least two
But Perseus, to get rid of the witnesses of such an physicians.
act of folly, had both Nicias and Andronicus put 1. The physician of Pyrrhus, king of Epeirus,
to death, B. c. 169. (Liv. xliv. 10.) who, during his master's war with the Romans,
10. A native of Cos, who made himself tyrant went to C. Fabricius Luscinus, the consul, B. c.
for a short time. He was a contemporary of Strabo. 278, and offered for a certain reward to take off
(Strab. xiv. p. 658.) [C. P. M.] the king by poison. (Claud. Quadrigar. ap. Aul,
NI'CIAS (NKtdas), literary. 1. Of Eleia. To Gell. Noct. Att. iii. 8; Zonaras, Annal. vol. ii. p,
him some attributed the BarcXucd, a poem generally 48, ed Basel, 1557.*) Fabricius not only rejected
ascribed to Orpheus. (Fabric. Bibl. Graec. vol. i. his base offer with indignation, but immediately
pp. 164, 172.) sent him back to Pyrrhus with notice of his
2. A rhetorician of Syracuse, who, with Tisias, treachery, who, upon receiving the information, is
instructed Lycias, B. c. 443. (Suid. s. v. Avar.) said to have cried out, "This is that Fabricius
Westermann (Gesch. der Griech. Bered. p. 38) whom it is harder to turn aside from justice and
suggests that the separate mention of a Syracusan honour than to divert the sun from its course."
Nicias may have arisen from the confusion of (Eutrop. ii. 14.) Zonaras adds (I.c. p. 50), that
nlames. For though many writers mention him the traitor was put to death, and his skin used to
along with Tisias, they seem to have all drawn cover the seat of a chair.
from one common source. 2. A native of Nicopolis, in the second century
3. A slave of Epicurus, manumitted along with after Christ, introduced by Plutarch in his SynmMys and Lycon, B. C. 278. (Diog. LaErt. p. 272, posiaca (vii. I. ~ 1), as one of the speakers in the
ed. Lond. 1664.) discussion, whether what is drunk enters the
4. Of Nicaea, repeatedly referred to by Athe- lungs. Nicias rightly maintained that it did not.
naeus, who names three works of his. These are, The writer on stones, Ilepl A&iOwv, quoted by
i. ALa3oXat, which seem to have been memoirs of Plutarch (Parall. ~ 13, De Flev. c. 20. ~ 4)
the various schools of philosophy (vi. p. 273, d., and Stobaeus (Floril. tit. 100. ~ 12. p. 541), is
xiii. p. 592, a.). 2.'Apica3ocd, which may have a different person, and does not appear to have
been an account of Arcadian usages, perhaps a por- been a physician', though so classed by Fabricius
tion of a larger work on Greek local usages (xiii. (Bibl. Gr. vol. xiii. p. 346, ed. vet.) [W. A. G.]
p. 609, e., where Athenaeus simply speaks of him NI'CIAS, a celebrated Athenian painter, was the
as Nutas). 3. A history Ilepl TCV pLAhooeop(v son of Nicomedes, andthe disciple of Antidotus(Plin.
(iv. p. 162, e.). But by comparing this passage, xxxv. 11. s. 40. ~ 28). On this ground Sillig argues
wherein he quotes Sotion, as the writer of the that since Antidotus was the pupil of Euphranor,
ALaeoXat, with another (xi. p. 505, b. c.),'where he who flourished about the 104th Olympiad, Nicias
mentions their names together, we think that we must have flourished about 01. 117 or about B. c.,may justly conclude, that, through inadvertence, or 310. And this agrees with the story of Plutarch
an error in the text, the names of Nicias and about the unwillingness of Nicias to sell one of his
Sotion have become interchanged, and that the pictures to Ptolemy, king of Egypt, if we suppose
history is to be transferred to Sotion. We have Ptolemy I. to be meant (Non poss. suav. viv. sec.
no means of ascertaining his age, except that he Epiczreos, 11). On the other hand, Pliny tells us
must have lived after Plato. (Athen. l. cc.; that Nicias assisted Praxiteles iz statuis circumliFabric. Bibl. Graec. vol. iii. p. 770.) a nendis, that is, covering marble statues with a sort
5. A Coan grammarian, who lived at Rome in of encaustic varnish, by which a beautifully smooth
the time of Cicero, with whom he was intimate. and tinted surface was given to them (see Diet. of
Suetonius (de Illustr. Gramsn. 14) calls him, if the Antiq. PAINTING, ~ viii.). Now Praxiteles flouordinary reading be correct, Curtius Nicia. He rished in the 104th Olympiad, B. C. 364-360.
also mentions (I. c.) that he originally belonged to We must therefore either suppose that Nicias thus
the party of Pompey, but that, having endeavoured painted the statues: of Praxiteles a considerable
to involve Pompey's wife in an intrigue with time after they were made, which is not very proMemmius, he was betrayed by her, and disgraced bable in itself, and is opposed to Pliny's statement;
by his former patron. From the scattered notices or else that Pliny has confounded two different
of him found in Cicero, we may conclude that he artists, indeed he himself suggests that there
was of an amiable disposition, but soft and effemi- may have been two artists of the name. (See
nate. We nowhere read of his having any great Sillig, Catal. Artif. s. v.) But, plausible as this
reputation. In one passage (ad Attic. vii. 3) argument is, it is not conclusive, for the division
Cicero does not seem to trust much to his authority of a master and pupil by seven or eight Olympiads
as to the question, whether Piraeea was the name is an arbitrary assumption. A pupil may be, and
of a locus or of an oppidunm. If we may trust a
corrupt passage in Suetonius (I.c.), he wrote a * Aelian calls the physician by the name of
treatise on the writings of Lucilius. (Sueton. l. c.; Cineas (Var. Hlist. xii. 33); and Ammianus MarCic. ad Fam. ix. 10, ad Att. 1. c. xii. 26, 53, xiii. cellinus (xxx. 1), Valerius Antias (ap. Aul. Gell.
28; Clinton, F. H. vol. iii. p. 207.) Cicero's 1. c.), and Valerius Maxinmus (vi. 5. ~ 1), tell the
letters that mention him'extend from B. C. 50 story of one of the friends of Pyrrhus, whom the
to 45. first named author calls Demochlares, and the two
6. A monk, who lived A. D. 601. He wrote: others Tinsochlres.