NENIA, or NĒNIA, in the ancient poetry, a kind of funeral song sung to the music of flutes at the obsequies of the dead. Authors represent them as sorry compositions, sung by hired women mourners called Prefice. The first rise of these Nenia is ascribed to the physicians. In the heathen antiquity, the goddess of tears and funerals was called Nenia; whom some suppose to have given that name to the funeral song, and others to have taken her name from it.
NEOCEsarIA, (Pliny), a town of Pontus on the south or the left side of the Lycus. About the year 342, when Leontius and Sallustius were consuls, it was entirely ruined by a dreadful earthquake, no edifice having withstood the violence of the shock, except the church and the bishop's habitation, who was saved, with the clergy and some other pious persons, while the rest of the inhabitants were buried in its ruins.