NKMOURS, DUKES OF. 



NEPOS, CORNELIUS. 



,-,. 



Stoic* and the Maniehees, the purity and elegance of kis style com- 

 pared with that of hit contemporariee, and the genuine piety which 

 bom heelf throughout his work, he has alwayi ranked very high in 

 the lilt of ancient Christian philosophers. The following opinions in 

 bit book are recorded by Sprengel (' Hiit da la MeM.') an worthy of 

 notice : 1. He elU the substance of the lungi "frothy flesh" (cap. 28, 

 p. 256). 2. He dittinRuishes the nerves from tendons, and says that 

 the former poetess the power of sensation, which the latter do not 

 (cap. 87, p. 251). 3. He says that the semen is prepared in the brain, 

 that it descends by certain Teasels (which he call* " two veins and two 

 arteries ") sitnatrd behind the ears, which he says is the reason why 

 " when those two reins that are near the ears and those near the 

 carotid arteries (or, as some read, ' the parotid glands ') are wounded, 

 the animal becomes barren ; " that it is distributed throughout the 

 whole body, and is deposited at lat in the testicles (c. 25, p. 244). 

 4. He explain* the senses, like Aristotle, by an intelligent spirit, which 

 is propagated from the organ of sensation to those of the senses (c. 6, 

 l>. 176) .'. He places the sensations in the anterior ventricles of the 

 brain, the intellect in the middle, and the memory in the posterior 

 (c. IS, p. 204). 6. He says that the elements composing the human 

 body are in a manner mutually opposed to each other, and that the 

 assistance of certain intermediate substances is neceegary in order to 

 effect their union (c. 5, pp. 151-156). 7. That food and medicines 

 'uly differ inasmuch as the former is similar to the elementary parti- 

 cles of our body, while the hitter are opposed to them (c. 1, p. 49). 

 The treatise f>( <f>votas ivSptaxov, ' De Natura Hominis,' was first 

 edited by Valla in Latin, Lugd., 1538,'sp. Seb. Gryphium ; the first 

 Greek edition was by Kllebodius, Svo, Antwerp, 1565, ap. ChrUt. 

 Plantin ; the next was by Dr. (afterwards Bishop) Fell, Svo, Oxon., 

 1071; the most complete is by Mutthaei, HaUe Magd., Svo, 1802 

 There is an English translation by George Wither, 12mo, Loud., 1636; 

 a German one by Osterhammer, Svo, Salzburg, 1819; and a French 

 one by J. B. Tbibault, Svo, Paris, 1844. 



M-f'MOURS, DUKES OF, a title derived from a town of France 

 in the department of Seine et Marue. It was borne first by a branch 

 of the Armagnac family, the last of whom, Louis d'Armhgnac, duke 

 of Nitmours, held a command in the army of Louis XII., in Italy, 

 aeainst the Spaniards under GonBalo of Cordova, and was killed at the 

 buttle of Cerignola in Apulia, in April 1503, With him ended the 

 line of Armatinac, which was descended from Cnribert son of Clo- 

 tarius II., whodird in 630. The duchy of Nemours was then bestowed 

 by Louii XII. upon Gaston do Foix, son of Mary, the sister of the 

 king. Guston fell, at twenty-three years of age, in the battle of 

 rUvrnna, against the Spaniards and Italians, in 1512. The duchy of 

 NYuiours was afterwards given by Francis I. to his uncle Philip of 

 Saroy, in 1528, in whose line it continued till 1659; when Henry of 

 Savoy, duke of Ndrnours, died, the lost male descendant of Philip. 

 His widow, Mary of Orleans, daughter of the duke of Longueville, 

 'arrived him many years. She inherited in 1694, from her brother the 

 Abbd de Longueville, the county of Nrufcbfttel, in Switzerland, and 

 died in 1707 : with her ended the line of Orleans Longueville. The 

 title of Duo de Nc'mours is now borne by the second and eldest 

 surviving son of the late king of the French, Louis Philippe. 



NK'NNIUS, according to several passages of the work ' Hiatoria 

 Britouum,' was, if these passages are genuine, a monk of Bongor, in 

 Wales, who lived in the first part of the 9th century. Voasius ('De 

 Historicis Latinis') says that he lived in the early part of the 7th 

 century, but he assigns no authority for thin assertion. In the history 

 Ncmiius states himself to have been n Briton, and not a Saxon, and a 

 disciple uf the holy bishop Elbodus, or Elvodug. He wrote a history 

 of Britain, ' Historia Britonum,' or, as it ii sometimes styled, ' Kulo 

 glum Britannia),' which, he says at the beginning, be compiled from al 

 he could find; "from the Roman annals and the chronicles of the 

 Fathers, as well as from the writings of the Scots and the Aogli, and 

 from the traditions of our ancestor*." The history begins frith a 

 fabulous genealogy of Brutus, grandson of ^Gneas, who reigned in 

 Britain. The anther afterwards relates the arrival of the Picte in 

 North Britain, and of the Scots in Ireland ; and after a brief and 

 confused narrative of the Roman conquest and empire in Britain, he 

 comes to th* Saxon invasion and gradual subjugation of the country 

 The manuscript of Nenniun was mutilated and interpolated by a 

 transcriber, who suns himself ' Samuel," and " a disciple of Boulariu 

 Presbyter," and who acknowledges thit he left out what he though 

 osslsn in Nenniua's work, and added what he gathered from other 

 writers concerning the towns and wonders of Britain : see end o 

 chap. Uir. of Nennii Ban<-horten.is ' Kulogium Britannia),' edited by 

 C. Bertram, and published together with 'Glides' and 'Richard the 

 Monk of Wcetmimtor, ito, Copenhagen, 1757. 



Such is the common account of Nennius, but it in, to say the least, 

 doubtful whether such a person ever existed, and whether the worl 

 ascribed to him was not the fabrication of a much later age. Thougl 

 the work existed earlier, the name of Nennius is not mentioned in 

 connection with it earlier than the 13th century. The work is iu 

 any caw of little value, bat even that little is of course greatly reduced 

 if it be the pro luction of an age much later than it profeetes to be 

 The question will be found fully discussed in Mr. Wright's ' Biograpbia 

 BriUnnica Literaria : ' Anglo-Saxon period ; and the Introduction tc 

 Mr. Stevenson's valuable variorum ediUon of the Hiatoria llritonum. 



translation of Ncunius, by the Rev. W. Gunn, was pnblished in 

 London, Svo, 1819, and reprintel in the 'Six Old English Chronicles, ' 

 ublinhod as a volume of Bohn's ' Antiquarian Library ,' 1848. 



NEPOS, CORNE'LIUS, a native of Hostilia (now Ostiglia) on the 

 'o, was a Roman writer and a friend of Cicero, who speaks of Nepos 

 n several of his Letter.'. ('Epist. ad Attic.,' xvi. 6 and 14.) Macro- 

 ilus (' Saturn.,' xi. 1 ) quotes the second book of Cioero's Epistles to 

 Cornelius Nepos, which have not come down to us. Lactautius men- 

 ions Nepos's Letters to Cicero, and Aulus Qellius (xv. 28) speaks of 

 'epos's ' Life of Cicero.' Catullus dedicated his poems to him. Nepos 

 towever was most intimate with Pomponius Atticus, whom he survived 

 a few years, and whose life he wrote. He also wrote a short notico 

 >f Cato the Censor, in which he says that, at the particular request 

 >f T. Pomponius Atticus, he had written a more extended biography 

 if Cato, which however has been lost According to the ol.l rcholiast*, 

 ha lives of Atticus and Cato formed part of a larger work of Nepos, 

 De Historicis Latinis.' In a passage in the Life of Dion, in the 

 Vita: Imperatoruin,' attributed to Nepos, the author mentions a work 

 i'hich be had written ' On the Greek Historians,' and the grammarian 

 ^hurUius (' Instit. Grammat.,' lib. 1) quotes a sentence of the sixteenth 

 rook ' Illustrium Virorum ' of Cornelius Nepos. 



The work styled ' Vita; Iropcratorum,' which is put into most school- 

 >oys' hands, not being mentioned by any ancient writer, was for a 

 ong time attributed to jEuiilius Probus, who lived iu the 4 th century, 

 and who in the manuscripts appears as having presented a copy of the 

 wok to the emperor Thepdosius I., and prefixed to it some verses in 

 which he seems to claim the authorship. Accordingly the earlier 

 editions of the ' Vitso Imperatorum,' the first by Janson, 1471, that of 

 1606, and others, were entitled ' Probi .(Emilii Excelleutium Impera- 

 toruin Vitje.' But afterwards the critics began to question the claims 

 of Probus to the authorship of the w^ork. The style and especially 

 ;he sentiments of the lives certainly appear not united to a writer of 

 .he age of Theodosius, such as the manifest disapprobation of a 

 monarchical government, which is exhibited in many passages, among 

 others iu the lives of Timoleon (i. 3) anil Dion (ix. 5). It is remark- 

 able that the author in his preface addresses the work to Atticus ; aud 

 yet at the end of the last life, that of Hannibal, when speaking of the 

 uncertainty about the date of that great commander's death, ho 

 says that "Atticus, in his 'Annals,' had left it written ('scriptuni 

 reliquit') that Hannibal died under the consulship of II. C. Mar- 

 cellus and Q. F. Labco ; ' speaking thus of Atticus as of a person 

 dead. After the fir>t editions of the ' Vitro Imperatorum ' were pub- 

 lished, Petrus Cornerus found in an old manuscript containing the 

 letters of Cicero to Atticua, the life of Atticus, a jl the short notice 

 of Cato the Censor above mentioned. These two biographies were 

 published together with the ' Vita) Imperatorum,' and the whole under 

 the name of yEinilius Probus, contrary to all evidence, as the author 

 of those two biographies speaks of Atticus as a personal acquaintance. 

 At last Lambiui, in the commentary to bis edition of the 'Imper.i- 

 torum Vine,' 1568, asserted the claims of Nepos as author of the 

 whole. But several solecisms aud barbarisms which occur in the 



Vitic' appearing to invalidate Lambini's supposition, as not being 

 likely to occur in a writer of the Augustan age, Barth and some other 

 critics have supposed that Probus abridged the original work of Nepos 

 iu the same manner as Justin bos epitomised the history of 'I 

 Pompeius. Vossius however ('De Historicis Latinis,' i. 14), Funccius 

 ('De Virili totate lingua) Latinaj,' part 11, ch. 14, sec. 38), and others 

 maintain that there is nothing in the 'Vitas Imperatorum' whirh 

 could not have been written by the Cornelius Nepos of the Augustan 

 sge, and that neither Probus nor any writer of the Thcodoxiou age 

 could have written in so pure a Roman style. The Introduction, &c. 

 of Tzschucke, Roth, and Benecke, to their edition of Nepos, noticed 

 below; Schoell, 'Abrcgd de I'llistoire da la Literature Uomuiue ; 

 and Duulop, ' History of Roman Literature,' may be consulted as to 

 this controversy. 



The ' Vitro Imperatorum ' are short biographies of twenty Greek 

 commanders, and of two Carthaginian, Hamilcar Barcas and Hannibal. 

 From a passage at the end of the last it appears that the author 

 intended to write also the lives of the great Roman commanders, 

 " that their exploits might be compared with those of the Greek, in 

 order to judge which were the greatest" These lives of the Roman 

 commander*, if ever written, have not come down to us, but it seems 

 that some of them at least were written, and, it would appear, by 

 Nepos, as Plutarch quotes the authority of Nepos for facts concern- 

 ing the lives of Marcellus and Lucullus. The ' Vitas Imp-ratoruin,' 

 besides the faults in language which are pointed out by Tzschucke in 

 his proemium and in the commentary which follows the text, cont ji. 

 many erroneous statements of facts, such as mistaking Miltia i 

 son of Cypselu', for the great Miltiades, the son of Ciuion, confounding 

 the battle of Mycale with that of the Eurymedon, and others which 

 are noticed by Tcschucke and Schoell. The author however gives 



many details of private life and manners, whicli are curious, as in the 



life of Epaminondas. The sentiments expressed by the author of the 



' Vita; ' are generous and virtuous, though often puerile and trifling. 



The sketch of the character of Alcibiades has been admired for its 

 graphic touches ; but the life of Pomponius Atticus is much better 



both for the matter and manner than any of the rest, and although 



too panegyrical, gives a lively description of his character. It has 



