NICOPOLIS in Epirus, one of the many cities bearing the same name—" city of vic tory"—founded by Augustus to commemorate his victory over Antony in the battle of _Actium; immediately after which he inclosed and dedicated to Neptune the space where his tent had been pitched, on a height which commanded a view of both the land and sea forces. Here he afterward built the city, and made it a Roman colony. " Some of the finest parts," Josephus says, "were the work of Herod, who was one of the greatest builders of his day." His connection with it, added to the well-known wide diffusion of the Jews into all the principal countries and cities, renders it probable that many of them lived there. Paul, in his letter to Titus, announced his purpose to pass the winter at Nicopolis; the subscription to the epistle asserts that Paul wrote it at Nicopolis of Mace donia, implying that it was there that he intended to pass the winter. But his language shows that he had not yet gone to Nicopolis, and the subscription to the epistle lies no authority. Jerome's opinion is generally adopted, that it was the Augustan Nicopolis to which Paul referred. Its situation was convenient, as a central point, in some of his journeys east and north. He had, long before, preached at Illyrieum, and one of his
last official acts was send Titus—probably after he had joined him at Nicopolis—on a mission to Dalmatia. Possibly he was arrested at Nicopolis soon afterward, and taken finally to Rome. /1'. this time the city, though only about 80 years old, had become the chief place in wet:cern Greece. As it owed its origin and importance to war, so it was destroyed by hosYhe armies. Julian, finding it in ruins, rebuilt it. Again destroyed by the Goths, Justinian restored it a second time. During the middle ages a new city was built at the point of the promontory, and the " city of victory" was deserted. The ruins, covering a large portion of the isthmus, still show its original grandeur and size. Words worth thus speaks of them: "A lofty wall spans a desolate plain; to the north of it rises, on a distant hill, the shattered stage of a theater; and to the west, the extended though brr,ken line of an aqueduct connects the distant mountains with the main subject of the picture—the city itself." There are also ruins of a medizeval castle and other buildings on the low, marshy, and now desolate plain.