=Nai´ades.= Inferior deities who presided over rivers, springs, wells, and fountains. The Naiads generally inhabited the country, and resorted to the woods and meadows near the stream over which they presided. They are represented as young and beautiful girls leaning on an urn, from which flows a stream of water. Ægle was the fairest of them, according to Virgil. The word Naiad has become Anglicized, and is in frequent use, especially by the poets. =Narcis´sus=, a beautiful youth, son of Cephisus and the nymph Liriope, was born at Thespis in Boeotia. He saw his image reflected in a fountain and became in love with it, thinking it to be the nymph of the place. His fruitless attempts to reach this beautiful object so provoked him, that he killed himself. His blood was changed into a flower which still bears his name. =Nemæ´a.= A town of Argolis, with a wood where Hercules in the sixteenth year of his age killed the celebrated Nemæan lion. It was the first of the labors of Hercules to destroy the monster, and when he found that his arrows and clubs were useless, against an animal whose skin was impenetrable, he seized it in his arms and strangled it. =Nem´esis.= One of the infernal deities, daughter of Nox. She was the goddess of vengeance. She is made one of the Parcæ by some mythologists, and is represented with a helm and a wheel. The term is sometimes used to signify vengeance itself. =Neoptol´emus.= A king of Epirus, son of Achilles and Deidamia, called also Pyrrhus. He greatly signalized himself during the siege of Troy, and he was the first who entered the wooden horse. He was inferior to none of the Grecian warriors in valor. Ulysses and Nestor alone were his superiors in eloquence and wisdom. =Ne´pos, Corne´lius.= A celebrated historian in the reign of Augustus, and, like the rest of his literary contemporaries, he enjoyed the patronage and obtained the favor of the emperor. He was the intimate friend of Cicero and Atticus, and recommended himself to notice by delicacy of sentiment and a lively disposition. Of all his valuable works the only one extant is his lives of illustrious Greek and Roman generals. =Neptu´nus.= One of the gods, son of Saturn and Ops, and brother to Jupiter and Pluto. He was devoured by his father as soon as he was born, and restored to life again by a potion given to Saturn, by Metis, the first wife of Jupiter. Neptune shared with his brothers the empire of Saturn, and received as his portion the kingdom of the sea. He did not think this equivalent to the empire of heaven and earth, which Jupiter had claimed, therefore he conspired to dethrone him. The conspiracy was discovered, and Jupiter condemned Neptune to build the walls of Troy. He married Amphitrite, who thus broke a vow she had made of perpetual celibacy.