rrupted march. It is further stated that Melpum in the
country of the Insubrians was destroyed on the same day as Veii: without
admitting this coincidence, we have no reason to doubt that the
statement is substantially true; and it is made by Cornelius Nepos, who,
as a native of Gallia Transpadana, might possess accurate information,
and whose chronological accounts were highly esteemed by the Romans.

There was no other passage for the Gauls except either across the Little
St. Bernard or across the Simplon; it is not probable that they took the
former road, because their country extended only as far as the Ticinus,
and if they had come across the Little St. Bernard, they would naturally
have occupied also all the country between that mountain and the
Ticinus. The Salassi may indeed have been a Gallic people, but it is by
no means certain; moreover, between them and the Gauls who had come
across the Alps the Laevi also lived; and there can be no doubt that at
that time Ligurians still continued to dwell on the Ticinus.

Melpum must have been situated in the district of Milan. The latter
place has an uncommonly happy situation: often as it has been destroyed,
it has always been restored, so that it is not impossible that Melpum
may have been situated on the very spot afterward occupied by Milan. The
Gallic migration undoubtedly passed by like a torrent with irresistible
rapidity: how then is it possible to suppose that Melpum resisted them
for two centuries, or that they conquered it and yet did not disturb the
Etruscans for two hundred years? It would be absurd to believe it,
merely to save an uncritical expression of Livy. According to the common
chronology, the Triballi, who in the time of Herodotus inhabited the
plains, and were afterward expelled by the Gauls, appeared in Thrace
twelve years after the taking of Rome--according to a more correct
chronology it was only nine years after that event. It was the same
movement assuredly which led the Gauls to the countries through which
the middle course of the Danube extends, and to the Po; and could the
people who came in a few days from Clusium to Rome, and afterward
appeared in Apulia, have been sitting quiet in a corner of Italy for two
hundred years? If they had remained there because they had not the power
to advance, they would have been cut to pieces by the Etruscans. We must
therefore look upon it as an established fact, that the migration took
place at the late