NOBLES, Roman: Origin of the term. "When Livy in his first six books writes of the disputes between the Patres or Patricians and the Plebs about the Public Land, he sometimes designates the Patricians by the name Nobiles, which we have in the form Nobles. A Nobilis is a man who is known. A man who is not known is Ignobilis, a nobody. In the later Republic a Plebeian who attained to a curule office elevated his family to a rank of honour, to a nobility, not acknowledged by any law, but by usage. … The Patricians were a nobility of ancient date. … The Patrician nobility was therefore independent of all office, but the new Nobility and their Jus Imaginum originated in some Plebeian who first of his family attained a curule office. … The true conclusion is that Livy in his first six books uses the word Nobiles improperly, for there is no evidence that this name was given to the Patres before the consulship of L. Sextius." _G. Long, Decline of the Roman Republic, volume 1, chapter 11._ See, also, ROME: B. C. 146. NOËTIANS AND SABELLIANS. "At the head of those in this century [the 3d] who explained the scriptural doctrine of the Father, Son, and holy Spirit, by the precepts of reason, stands Noëtus of Smyrna; a man little known, but who is reported by the ancients to have been cast out of the church by presbyters (of whom no account is given), to have opened a school, and to have formed a sect. It is stated that, being wholly unable to comprehend how that God, who is so often in Scripture declared to be one and undivided, can, at the same time, be manifold, Noëtus concluded that the undivided Father of all things united himself, with the man Christ, was born in him, and in him suffered and died. On account of this doctrine his followers were called Patripassians. … After the middle of this century, Sabellius, an African bishop, or presbyter, of Ptolemais, the capital of the Pentapolitan province of Libya Cyrenaica, attempted to reconcile, in a manner somewhat different from that of Noëtus, the scriptural doctrine of Father, Son, and holy Spirit, with the doctrine of the unity of the divine nature." Sabellius assumed "that only an energy or virtue, emitted from the Father of all, or, if you choose, a particle of the person or nature of the Father, became united with the man Christ. And such a virtue or particle of the Father, he also supposed, constituted the holy Spirit." _J. L. von Mosheim, Historical Commentaries, 3d Century, sections 32-33._ NÖFELS, NAEFELS, Battle of (1388). See SWITZERLAND: A. D. 1386-1388. Battle of (1799). See FRANCE: A. D. 1799 (AUGUST-DECEMBER). NOLA, Battle of (B. C. 88). See ROME: B. C. 90-88. NOMBRE DE DIOS: Surprised and plundered by Drake (1572). See AMERICA: A. D. 1572-1580. NOMEN, COGNOMEN, PRÆNOMEN.