or Nenia, in ancient Latin poetry, a kind of funeral song, sung to the music of flutes at the obsequies of the dead. Authors represent the nenia as sorry compositions, sung by hired female mourners, called praefices. The first rise of these nenia are 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.