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Menapii


The Menapii were a Belgic tribe of northern Gaul in pre-Roman and Roman times. According to descriptions in such authors as Strabo, Caesar, Pliny the Elder and Ptolemy their territory had stretched northwards to the mouth of the Rhine in the north, but more lastingly it stretched along the west of the Schelde river. In later geographical terms this territory corresponds roughly to the modern coast of Flanders, the Belgian provinces of East and West Vlaanderen. It also extended into neighbouring France and the river deltas of the southern Netherlands.

Their civitas, or administrative capital, under the Roman empire was Cassel (northern France), and later this was moved nearer to a river in Tournai (in present-day Belgium). Both of these are near Thérouanne, which was the civitas of the neighbouring Morini tribe, and indeed in the Middle Ages Cassel became part of the Diocese of Thérouanne. Cassel was therefore in the southern extreme of the Menapii lands. A pattern of placing Roman tribal capitals in the south is also found in the neighbouring Belgian tribal states, of the Nervii and Tungri. The positions of such Roman tribal capitals frequently didn't correspond to the centre of a tribe's territory in pre-Roman political geography. Similarly, in those neighbouring regions, the centre of Roman civilization was typically moved further south, and on to a major river, in late Roman times, after the area was threatened by Frankish tribes from outside the empire.


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