the ten suburbican provinces, attached to the diocese of Rome and including middle and lower Italy, with the islands of Sicily, Corsica and Sardinia—this decision enshrines an important piece of evidence for the history of the papacy. On this opportunity, his ancient privileges were restored to the bishop of Jerusalem, who, in consequence of the political history of the Holy Land, had been subordinated to the metropolitan of Caesarea (canon vii.). The path was smoothed for the readmittance of the Novatians (Cathari) into the church, by recognizing, in this case, their clergy, with the bare stipulation that the laying-on of hands should follow their Written promise to be faithful to the doctrine of the Catholic Church (canon viii.).
With regard to the much-debated question as to the termination of the Easter festival, the synod committed itself so far as to pronounce in favour of the Alexandrian cycle—a settlement which entailed such important results in practical life that it was communicated to the Christian churches by Constantine in a circular letter. The problem, whether a baptism, performed by heretics in the name of Christ or the Trinity, should rank as a baptism or not, had given rise to an animated controversy between the Roman bishop Stephen, who answered in the affirmative, and Cyprian of Carthage, who gave an equally decided negative. The council followed the Roman practice, merely declaring the nullity of baptisms imparted by the adherents of Paul of Samosata (canon xix.). An important provision, in point of ecclesiastical law, was that the chirotony of a bishop required the presence of at least three other bishops of his province, while the confirmation of the choice remained at the disposal of the metropolitan (canon iv.). A further regulation was that two provincial synods should be held annually (canon v.); but a law enacting the celibacy of the clergy was rejected at Nicaea, since Paphnutius, an aged bishop of Egypt who had been tested in persecution, warned his colleagues against the danger of imposing too arduous a yoke upon the priesthood, and defended the sanctity of marriage.
As Constantine had convened the synod, so he determined its conclusion. A brilliant banquet in the imperial palace—of which Eusebius of Caesarea gives an enthusiastic account marked its close, after which the bishops were granted their return. The admonitions to peace with which he dismissed them proved unavailing for the reasons indicated above: but the reputation of the first ecumenical council suffered no abatement in consequence.
See F. v. Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, i. (ed. 2, Freiburg, 1873), pp. 282-443. A catalogue of the special literature will be found in Loofs’s article “Arianismus” in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyclopädie f. protestantische Theologie, i. (ed. 3, Leipzig, 1897): also Bernoulli, “Nicaenisches Konzil,” ib., vol. xiv. (1904), pp. 9 sqq. (C. M.)
NICANDER (2nd cent. B.C.), Greek poet, physician and grammarian, was born at Claros, near Colophon, where his family held the hereditary priesthood of Apollo. He flourished under Attalus III. of Pergamum. He wrote a number of works both in prose and verse, of which two are preserved. The longest, Theriaca, is an hexameter poem (958 lines) on the nature of venomous animals and the wounds which they inflict. The other, Alexipharmaca, consists of 630 hexameters treating of poisons and their antidotes. In his facts Nicander followed the physician Apollodorus. Among his lost works may be mentioned: Aetolica, a prose history of Aetolia; Heteroeumena, a mythological epic, used by Ovid in the Metamorphoses and epitomized by Antoninus Liberalis; Georgica and Melissourgica, of which considerable fragments are preserved, said to have been imitated by Virgil (Quintilian x. 1. 56). The works of Nicander were praised by Cicero (De oratore, i. 16), imitated by Ovid, and frequently quoted by Pliny and other writers. His reputation does not seem justified; his works, as Plutarch says (De audiendis poetis, 16), have nothing poetical about them except the metre, and the style is bombastic and obscure; but they contain some interesting information as to ancient belief on the subjects treated.
Editions.—J. G. Schneider (1792, 1816); O. Schneider (1856) (with the Scholia); H. Klauser, “De Dicendi Genere . . . Nicandri” (Dissertationes Philologicae Vindobonenses, vi. 1898). The Scholia (from the Göttingen MS.) have been edited by G. Wentzel in Abhandlungen der k. Gesellschaft der Wiss. zu Göttingen, xxxviii. (1892). See also W. Vollgraff, Nikander und Ovid (Groningen, 1909 foll.).
NICANOR, Greek grammarian, son of Hermeias of Alexandria (or Hierapolis), lived during the reign of Hadrian. He chiefly devoted himself to the study of punctuation and the difference of meaning caused by it. Hence he was nicknamed “the Punctuator” (ὁ ςτιγματίας). He is known to have written on the punctuation of Homer and Callimachus. He was possibly the author of a work Περὶ Μετονομασιῶν (On the Change of Names of Places), of which some fragments are preserved in C. W. Müller, Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, iii. 632.
Edition of the Iliad and Odyssey fragments by L. Friedländer (1850) and O. Carnuth (1875) respectively.
NICARAGUA, a republic of Central America, bounded on the N. by Honduras, E. by the Caribbean Sea, S. by Costa Rica, and W. by the Pacific Ocean (for map, see Central America). Pop. (1905), about 550,000; area, 49,200 sq. m. Nicaragua forms an irregular equilateral triangle with its base stretching for 280 m. along the Caribbean Sea from Cape Gracias à Dios southwards to the San Juan delta, and its apex at the Coseguina volcano, on the Bay of Fonseca, which separates Nicaragua on the Pacific side from Salvador. The frontier which separates the republic from Honduras extends across the continent from east-north-east to west-south-west. It is defined by the river Segovia for about one-third of the distance, or from Cape Gracias à Dios to 86° W.; it then deflects across the watershed on the east and south of the Hondurian river Choluteca, crosses the main Nicaraguan cordillera (mountain chain), and follows the river Negro to the Bay of Fonseca. In accordance with the treaty of 1858, which was confirmed in 1888 by the United States president, acting as arbitrator, and more fully defined in 1896, the boundary towards Costa Rica is drawn 2 m. S. of the San Juan river and Lake Nicaragua, as far as a point parallel to the centre of the western shore of the lake. It is then continued south-westward for the short distance which intervenes between this point and the northernmost headland of Salinas Bay, on the Pacific.
Physical Features.—The coasts of Nicaragua are strikingly different in configuration. The low, swampy and monotonous shore of the Caribbean, with its numerous lagoons and estuaries, and its fringe of reefs and islets, contains only three harbours: Gracias à Dios, Bluefields or Blewfields, and Greytown (San Juan del Norte). Its length, from Cape Gracias a Dios to the San Juan delta, is nearly 300 m. The Pacific coast, measuring some 200 m. from the Bay of Fonseca to Salinas Bay, is bold, rocky and unbroken by any great indentation; here, however, are the best harbours of the republic—the southern arm of the Bay of Fonseca (q.v.), Corinto, Brito and San Juan del Sur.
The surface of the country is naturally divided into five clearly distinct zones: (1) the series of volcanic peaks which extend parallel to the Pacific at a little distance inland; (2) the plains and lakes of the great depression which lies to the east of these mountains and stretches from sea to sea, between the Bay of Fonseca and the mouths of the San Juan; (3) the main cordillera, which skirts the depression on the east, and trends north-west from Monkey Point or Punta Mico on the Caribbean Sea, until it is merged in the ramifications of the Hondurian and Salvadorian highlands; (4) the plateaus which slope gradually away from the main cordillera towards the Caribbean; (5) the east or Mosquito coast, with its low-lying hinterland. The last-named region has to a great extent had a separate history; and it was only in 1894 that the Mosquito Reserve, a central enclave which includes more than half of the littoral and hinterland, was incorporated in the republic and renamed the department of Zelaya. (See Mosquito Coast.)
Though situated almost on the western edge of the country, and greatly inferior, both in continuity and in mean altitude, to the main cordillera, the chain of volcanic cones constitutes a watershed quite equal in importance to the cordillera itself. It consists for the most part of isolated igneous peaks, sometimes connected by low intervening ridges. It terminates in the extreme north-west with Coseguina (2831 ft.), and in the extreme south-east with the low wooded archipelagos of Solentiname and Chichicaste near the head of the San Juan river. Between these two extremes the chief cones, proceeding southwards, are: the Maribios chain, comprising El Viejo (5840 ft.), Santa Clara, Telica, Orota, Las Pilas, Axosco, Momotombo (4127 ft.), all crowded close together between the Bay of Fonesca and Lake
