Melpum, the City Swallowed by Oblivion

---

The main chapter mentions, in section II, a second wave of Celtic invasions around 396 BC, marked by the taking of Melpum. This name, cited in a single sentence in the main narrative, in fact designates a city that was in its time one of the wealthiest in northern Italy — and whose destruction, reported through a curious calendar coincidence, has long intrigued ancient historians themselves.

---

📜 A coincidence noted by the Ancients

The Roman historian Cornelius Nepos, himself from Cisalpine Gaul and therefore particularly well informed about the affairs of his home region, reports — according to the testimony given by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History — that Melpum was destroyed by a coalition of Gaulish peoples, the Insubres, the Boii, and the Senones, on the very same day the Roman dictator Camillus captured the Etruscan city of Veii, in 396 BC. This simultaneity, noted by the ancient authors themselves, illustrates just how much the two worlds — Etrusco-Latin in the south, Gaulish in the north — were then experiencing parallel upheavals without any direct causal link between them.

The joint participation of three different Gaulish peoples in this capture of Melpum, following Pliny, suggests a large-scale operation rather than a simple local raid — an occasional coalition that nonetheless has nothing of a lasting political union, in keeping with what this chapter observes elsewhere (section V) about the absence of Gaulish unity beyond specific circumstances.

---

🔍 A city whose exact location is still unknown

Despite the wealth ancient sources attribute to it, the exact location of Melpum has never been identified with certainty by modern archaeology. Several hypotheses have been proposed, placing the city in the Lombard plain, sometimes near Milan itself — some ancient and modern authors have even suggested that Mediolanum may have developed on or near its former site, though no excavation has been able to confirm this continuity. This persistent uncertainty makes Melpum a rare case in the historiography of the period: a city whose existence and destruction are attested by relatively reliable written sources, yet whose material reality still entirely eludes archaeology.

This lack of material confirmation calls for particular caution: nothing rules out that literary tradition amplified Melpum’s real importance, in the same way other episodes of this ancient period may have been reworked or embellished over the centuries.

---

🧠 Key points

• According to Cornelius Nepos, as cited by Pliny the Elder, Melpum is destroyed by a coalition of Insubres, Boii, and Senones in 396 BC, the very day Camillus captures Veii.
• This coincidence, noted by the ancient authors themselves, highlights parallel upheavals between the Etrusco-Latin world and the Gaulish world, without any direct causal link between them.
• The exact location of Melpum remains unidentified by archaeology to this day, despite hypotheses placing it near present-day Milan.
• This lack of material confirmation calls for caution regarding the real scale ancient literary tradition attributes to this city.