The short creed — the one on the crucifix at the start of the Rosary. The apostles did not write it, and the story that each of them contributed a line is a legend; what it actually is turns out to be older and more interesting.
It says the whole thing in a hundred words. The Nicene Creed argues; this one just states — three paragraphs, Father, Son, Spirit, and the Son's gets the story. It is built to be learned by heart by someone who cannot read, and it was.
Two lines in it stop people. He descended into hell — the old word for the place of the dead, not the place of punishment — and the resurrection of the body, which is more than most people think they signed up for. It is said on the crucifix of the Rosary so that the fifty-three Hail Marys that follow are said by someone who has just declared what they are about.
The name is a claim, and the claim is a legend. From the fourth century on, a story circulated that on the day of Pentecost the twelve apostles composed it together, each supplying a clause — Peter I believe in God, Andrew and in Jesus Christ, and so on down the line. It was believed for a thousand years. It was rejected, politely, by the Greeks at the Council of Florence in 1439, who had never heard of it, and no scholar has defended it since.
What it actually is, is older than the legend. It grew out of the questions asked of people being baptized in Rome — Do you believe in God the Father almighty? Do you believe in Christ Jesus, his Son… — attested by the early third century and called the Old Roman Symbol. The answers were turned into a statement, clauses were added over the centuries, and the wording we say was settled by about 700. Apostolic in the sense that it carries what they taught; not in the sense that they wrote it.
It became the creed of the West's ordinary life — the Nicene for Mass, this one for everything else: baptism, the Office, teaching children, and the Rosary, where it opens every one. Luther kept it, so did Calvin, so it is one of the few texts that every Western Christian says in nearly the same words.
The Nicene Creed is its longer, argued sibling. If you know this one you know the shape of that one; the difference is that this one was never in a fight.