or as his name is variously written, Nicaeas or Niceas, or Nicetus or Nicetius, was by birth a Dacian, and bishop of a city called by ecclesiastical writers Civitas Romatiana or Remessilanesis, situated in Maesia, somewhere between Naissus and Sardica. This prelate visited Italy towards the close of the fourth century, and having repaired to Nola for the purpose of visiting the sepulchre of St. Felix, there gained the good-will of Paulinus, who celebrates, in a poem still extant, the high talents and virtues of his friend, and the zeal with which he laboured in preaching the Gospel among the barbarians. Nicetas paid a second visit to Nola A. D. 402, and it appears from an epistle of Pope Innocentius I. (n. xvii. ed. Coustant). where he is numbered among the dignitaries of Macedonia, that he was alive in 414.
Considerable confusion has been occasioned by the Mistake of Baronius, who supposed that Nicetas the Dacian, mentioned in the Roman Martyrology under 7th January, was a different person the Nicaeas Romatianae civitatis episcopus of Gennadius, and that the latter was the same with the Alcaeas of Aquileia, to whom a letter was addressed by Leo the Great in A. D. 458,--an hypothesis which forced him to prove that Aquileia bore the name of Civitas Romaliana. But the researches of Holstein, Quesnel and Tillemont have set the question at rest.
Gennadins informs us that Nicetas composed in a plain but elegant style instructions for those who were preparing for baptism, in six books, of which he gives the arguments, and also Ad Lapsam Virginem Libellus. Of these, the former is certainly lost, but we find among the works of St. Jerome (vol. xi. p. 178, ed. Vallarsi, vol.v. ed Bened.), a tract entitled Objurgatioad Susannam Lapsam, and among the works of St. Ambrose (vol. ii. p. 301. ed. Bened.) the same piece under the name Tractatus ad Virgi nem Lapsam, although it can be proved by the most convincing arguments that neither of these divines could have been the author. Hence it was conjectured by Cotelerius that it might, in reality,