Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/415

 NARDINIUM. it diJ also to ]lassilia. (Diod. v. 38.) There was at Narbo a great variety of dress and of people, who were attracted by the commercial advantages of the city. It was adorned with public buildings, after the fashion of Roman towns. (Martial, viii. 72; Auson. Narbo ; Sidon. Apollin. Cai-m. 23.) A temple of Parian marble, probably some poetical ex- aggeration, is spoken of by Ausonius; and Sidonius enumerates, in half a dozen miserable lines, the glories of ancient Narbonne, its gates, porticoes, forum, theatre, and other things. He speaks of a mint, and a bridge over the Atax. The coast of Narbonne was and is famed for oysters. Not a single Roman monument is standing at Narboime, but the sites of many buildings are ascer- tained. Numerous architectural fragments, friezes, bas-reliefs, tombstones, and inscriptions, still remain. Some inscriptions are or were preserved in the courts and on the great staircase of the episcopal palace. There is a museum of antiquities at Nar- bonne, which contains fragments of mosaic, busts, heads, cinerary urns, and a great number of inscrip- tions. [G. L.] NARDI'NIUM (NapSiVwr, Ptol. ii. 6. § 34), a town of the Saelini, a tribe of the Astures, in Hispania Tarraconensis, probably near Villalpando on the Ezla. (Sestini, p. 172.) NARISCI, a German tribe of the Suevi, occupy- ing the country in the west of the Gabreta Silva, and east of the Hermunduri. They extended in the north as far as the Sudeti Montes, and in the south as far as the Danube. In the reign of M. Aurelius, 3000 of them emigrated southward into the Roman province. (Dion Cass. Ixxi. 21, where they are called Nopi(TTai.) After the Marcomannian war, they completely disappear from history, and the country once occupied by them is inhabited, in the Peuting. Table, by a tribe called Armalausi. (Tac. Germ. 42; Jul. Capitol. M. Ant. 22.) Ptolemy (ii. 11. § 23) calls them Varisti (OuapiCTToi), which is possibly the more genuine form of the name, since in the middle ages a portion of the country once in- habited by thera bore the name of Provincia Va- riscorum. [L. S.J NA'RNIA (tJapvia, Strab., Ptol. : Eth. Narniensis : Narni), one of the most important cities of Umbria, situated on the left bank of the river Nar, about 8 miles above its confluence with tlie Tiber. It was on the line of the Via Flaminia, by which it was distant 56 miles from Rome. (^Itin. Ant. p. 125; Itin. liter. p. 613; Westphal, -Sot». Kamp. p. 145.) It appears to have been an ancient and important city of the Umbrians, and previous to the Roman conquest bore the name of Nequinum. (Plin. iii. 14. s. 19 ; Liv. x. 9 : Steph. Byz. writes the name Nrjfcowa.) In b. c. 300, it was besieged by the Roman consul Appu- leius; but its natural strength enabled it to defy his anns, and the siege was protracted till the next year, when it was at length surprised and taken by the consul M. P'ulvius, b. c. 299. (Liv. s. 9, 10.) Ful- vius was in consequence honoured with a triumph "de Samnitibus Nequinatibusque" (^Fasl.Capit.}; UDd the Roman senate determined to secure their new conquests by sending thither a colony, which assumed the name of Narnia from its position on the banks of the Nar. (Liv. x. 1 0.) It is strange that all men- tion of this colony is omitted by Velleius Paterculus; but its name again occurs in Livy, in the list of the thirty Latin colonies during the Second Punic War. On that occasion (b. c. 209), it was one of those which professed themselves exhausted and unable NARO. 399 any longer to bear the burdens of the war ; for which it was subsequently punished by the imposition of a doublecontingent and increased contribution in money. (Liv. xxvii. 9; xxix. 15.) Yet the complaint seems, in the case of Narnia at least, to have been well founded; for a few years afterwards (b. c. 199), the colonists again represented their depressed condition to the senate, and obtained the appointment of tri- umvirs, who recruited their numbers with a fresh body of settlers. (Id. xxxii. 2.) During the Second Punic War, Narnia was the point at which, in b. c. 207, an army was posted to oppose the threatened advance of Hasdrubal upon Rome ; and hence it was some Narnian horsemen who were the first to bring to the capital the tidings of the great victory at the Metaurus. (Liv. xxvii. 43. 50.) These are the only notices we find of Narnia under the republic, but it seems to have risen into a flourishing municipal town, and was one of the chief places in this part of Um- bria. (Strab. v. p. 227; Plin. iii. 14. s. 19; Ptol. iii. 1. § 54.) It probably owed its prosperity to its posi- tion on the great Flaminian highway, as well as to the great fertility of the subjacent plain. In the civil war between Vitellius and Vespasian, Narnia bore an important part, having been occupied by the generals of the former as a stronghold, where they hoped to check the advance of the army of Vespasian ; but the increasing disaffection towards Vitellius caused the troops at Narnia to lay down their arms without resistance. (Tac. Hist. iii. 58—63, 67, 78.) The natural strength of Narnia, and its position as com- manding the Flaminian Way, also rendered it a fort- ress of the utmost importance during the Gothic wars of Belisarius and Narses. (Procop. B. G. i. 16, 17; ii. 11; iv. 33.) It became an episcopal see at an early period, and continued throughout the middle ages to be a considerable town. The position of Narnia on a lofty hill, precipitous on more than one side, and half encircled by the waters of the Nar, which wind through a deep and picturesque wooded valley immediately below the town, is alluded to by many ancient writers, and described with great trathfulness and accuracy by Claudian, as well as by the historian Procopius. (Claudian, de VI. Cons. Hon. 515—519 ; Sil. Ital. viii. 458 ; Martial, vii. 93 ; Procop. B. G. i. 17.) It was across this ravine, as well as the river Nar itself, that the Via Flaminia was carried by a bridge constructed by Augustus, and which was considered to surpass all other structures of the kind in bold- ness and elevation. Its ruins are still regarded with admiration by all travellers to Rome. It consisted originally of three arches, built of massive blocks of white marble ; of these the one on the left bank is still entire, and has a height of above sixty feet ; the other two have fallen in, apparently from the foundations of the central pier giving way ; but all the piers remain, and the imposing style of the whole structure justifies the admiration which it appears to have excited in ancient as well as modern times. Martial alludes to the bridge of Narnia as, even in his day, the great pride of the place. (Procop. I. c. ; JIartial. vii. 93. 8 ; Cluver. Jtal. p. 636 ; Eustace's Itah/, vol. i. p. 339.) The em- peror Nerva was a native of Narnia, though his family would .seem to have been of foreign extrac- tion. (Vict. Epit. 11 ; Cues. 12.) [K. H. 1',.] NARO (6 Ndpojc, Ptol. ii. 16. § 5 ; Plin. iii. 26; Nar, Pomp. Mela, ii. 3. § 13; Narenuni, Geogr. Rav. iv. 16: Nai-enta), a river of Iliyricum, which Scylax (pp. 8, 9) describes as navigable from its