as built by some of Alexander's soldiers, natives of Nicea in Locris, and derived its name from the birth-place of its founders. Another account, however, states that it was erected on the ruins of a former town (Anore or Helicore), by Antigonus, and was called after him Antigoneia, and that this name was afterwards changed into Nicea, in honour of Nicea, the wife of Lysimachus. The town enjoyed a long career of prosperity under the different governments that successively ruled over it. Under the native kings of Bithynia it was important enough to compete with Nicomedia for the honour of being considered capital of the country. During its subjection to the Romans many of its public buildings were restored, and its streets were often the scene of the celebration of great festivals in honour of the emperors and the gods. In the time of the Eastern Empire the city was enlarged, was surrounded with new walls, and became famous throughout Christendom as the place where, in 325 A.D., the Nicene creed was drawn up. (See Nice, Council of.) After being during the middle ages a frequent subject of dispute between the Turks and the Christians, it was constituted by Theodore Lascaris, in the thirteenth century, the capital of Western Asia. At length, however, in the fourteenth century, on being incorporated with the Ottoman empire by the Emir Orchan, Nicea began to decline in prosperity. Many of the fine Greek temples and churches were then pulled down to furnish materials for mosques and other buildings. From that time the large city gradually dwindled down until, in the present day, it has become a poor paltry village of little more than a hundred houses. Yet many ruined baths and edifices standing amid gardens and cornfields, and a large portion of the ancient walls, still indicate to the visitor the splendour and magnitude of the ancient Nicaea.

NICEA, a town of Liguria. See Nice.the author of two Greek poems on poisons and antidotes, was a native of Claros near Colophon in Ionia; and flourished in the second century B.C., in the reign of Attalus, the last king of Pergamus. He succeeded his father Damaseus in the hereditary office of priest of Apollo Clarus. His poems show that he possessed a fine talent for observation, and was fully equal to the other naturalists of his own age. The other features, however, of his literary character are not so favourable. His dissertations were unmethodical and often prolix; he was ever on the outlook for obsolete and antiquated expressions, which must often have rendered his meaning obscure even to his contemporaries; and almost the only quality of the poet he evinced was a fondness for the strange and the fabulous. The longer of his two extant poems is entitled Theriaca, treats of the wounds inflicted by poisonous animals, and consists of nearly a thousand hexameter verses. Among the curious zoological passages which are found heterogeneously mingled with erroneous doctrines and absurd fables, are the first account ever given of the moths that flutter round the evening candle, and an interesting description of the resistance that the serpents make in defense of their eggs against the ichneumon. The other poem, entitled Alexipharmaca, is a treatise, as its name implies, on antidotes, and contains more than 600 hexameter lines. It seems to have been intended for a continuation of the Theriaca, and accordingly it gives an account of the effect of different poisons. A full analysis of the medical portions of these two poems is given in Dr Adams' edition of the work of Paulus Aegineta. Nicander was the author of several other productions, both prose and poetical, of which little more than the titles remain. The best edition of his works, entire and fragmentary; is that of J.G. Schneider, in two volumes, published respectively at Halle in 1792, and at Lepcis in 1816.