(Νεῖλος), or NEILUS, the name of several Byzantine writers. A full account of them is given by Leo Allatius, Diatribe de Nilis et eorum Scriptis, in the edition of the letters of Nilus [see below, No. 1], Rome, 1688, and by Harless (Fabric. Bibl. Graec. vol. x. p. 3, &c.), to which writers we must refer for further particulars and authorities. It is only the most important of them, and the chief facts connected with them that can be mentioned here.
1. ASCETA ET MONACHUS (and Saint), lived in the fifth century of the Christian aera.
Saxius places him about the year A. D. 420. He was descended from a noble family in Constantinople, and was eventually raised to the dignity of eparch, or governor of his native city; but being penetrated, we are told, with a deep feeling of the reality of divine things, he renounced his rank and dignities, and retired with his son Theodulus to a monastery on Mount Sinai, while his wife and daughter took refuge in a religious retreat in Egypt. His son is said to have perished in an attack made upon the convent by some barbarians; but Nilus himself escaped, and appears to have died about A. D. 450 or 451.
2. CABASILAS. [CABASILAS.]
3. Of RHODES, of which he was metropolitan, about A. D. 1360. He is stated, however, to have been a native of Chios.
4. SCHOLASTICUS, of whom we know nothing, except that he is the author of an epigram in the Greek Anthology (vol. iii. p. 235, ed. Jacobs; Brunck, Anal. iii. p. 14).
physician. [NILEUS].