ABSTRACT
The tradition preserved by Livy speaks of an invasion of Italy by Gauls as having taken place in the reign of the elder Tarquin at Rome c. 600 B.C. But their incursions, which helped to curtail greatly the already decadent Etruscan power, cannot have begun so early. Herodotus (484-4Z 5 ?), it has often been observed, makes no mention of them among the peoples known to him in north Italy. The omission might have been thought accidental, were there not positive evidence to show that Livy's dating is about two centuries too high. By c. 400 B.C. the Kelts were already pressing the Etruscan settlements of Cisalpine Gaul hard, driving them up into the Alpine valleys or southwards across the Po. Whatever the final causes of the collapse of the Etruscan control of a large part of the peninsula may have been, north of the Apennines they were few in numbers, and apart from the larger settlements, probably amounted to nothing more than administrators and staff officers, who, deserted by their kinsmen to the south could not withstand the onrush of the barbarians. Melpum, an Etruscan city near Milan (Melzo ?), is said to have fallen into their hands in 396 B.C. Ancient records depict them as tall, fair-haired, and blue-eyed invaders who entered Italy over the western passes of the Alps and occupied first the northern and western portions of the valley of the Po; then crossed this river and advanced eastwards and southwards beneath the shadow of the Apennines in the directi9n of Felsina (Bologna) to make their way over the mountains and through Umbria into Etruria and the Tiber valley and, after the sack of Rome, to scatter over central Italy, some of them reaching the very south of the peninsula and even Sicily.
