Nympae. The ancients were accustomed to place under the protection of beings whom they called nymphs, those productions of nature which, as in the vegetable world, seem to possess certain attributes of life. Neither goddesses nor mortals, but partaking to a degree of the quality of both, they lived a long time, for ambrosia was their food; but their life at length yielded to the fatal axe of the woodman or to the scissors of the inexorable Fates.
The nymphs of Roman fable were of diverse kinds. For some of them presided over mountains and fields, whilst others again found their element in the sea and other places. Some writers appear to regard them in no other light than as celebrated women of the most remote antiquity. For example Egeria, the familiar spirit of Numa; Acca Laurentia, the nurse of Romulus; Anna Perenna, the sister of Dido; Flora is said to have been a most noted courtesan. Figures of nymphs are often found on Roman monuments and vases; they also appear on a few Greek Imperial and Colonial coins. But the only Latin coins which present them, as a type are that denarius of the Accoleia family, on which the three sisters of Phaeton appear, as changed into larch trees; and the bronze medallion of Antonius Pius, which exhibits two nymphs of the Hesperides standing close to a tree bearing apples, round the trunk of which a serpent is entwined. See Hercules.