[5] Kostas Buraselis identifies this story as a literary trope, designed to reinforce a ruler's legitimacy and perhaps also indicating that Nicias came from low birth.

[8] On the reverse, they have a portrait of Asclepius (the patron god of Kos) and two legends, one naming the annual mint magistrate and another reading "of the Koans" (Ancient Greek: ΚΩΙΩΝ)[8][9] Nicias wears a headband, which has been identified by some scholars as a diadem (the symbol of kingship in the Hellenistic period), a wreath, or an infula – a knotted band associated with sacred beings and designed to assimilate him to the god Asclepius.

[11] In later letters of 45 BCE, he mentions the 'cultivated conversation' he had previously enjoyed with Nicias.,[12] as well as the mushrooms Nicias served at a dinner-party attended by various figures of the Roman elite.

[16] More than twenty little stone altars associated with Nicias have been found on Kos, all of which bear an identical text: θεοῖς πατρῴοις ὑπὲρ τᾶς Νικία τοῦ δάμου υἱοῦ, φιλοπάτριδος, ἥρωος, εὐεργέτα, δὲ τᾶς πόλιος σωτηρίας (Dedicated) to the ancestral gods, for the well-being of Nicias, son of the people, lover of the fatherland, hero, and benefactor of the city.The number and modest size of these altars indicates that they were originally set up in private houses.

[17] The inscription on these altars closely identifies Nicias with Kos and its people, presenting his devotion to the state as equivalent to the filial piety of a son to his father.

[18] This is the first attestation of the title "son of the People (damos, Doric Greek for demos)," which would become a common honorific for civic benefactors in the Roman Imperial period.

[19][20] According to Anna Heller, the association with a humble birth is unpersuasive, and the lack of the patronymic should be understood as an effort to emphasise Nicias' filial devotion to Kos and a result of the novelty of the "son of the People" title.

[27] A decree from Kos, probably dating to the late first century CE, revises the list of priests of Apollo as part of a process of destroying and replaces "all the inadmissibly and illegally engraved inscriptions".