The origins of Milan

Belloveso, Tubai e Brenno

Which were the first men lived the zone where the city rose?
Perhaps they were the ancient populations of the Liguris that, reunited in tribes, they built where the first huts on the place where it had to rise the monumental center of the city.
This happened about 1500 before Christ.
At the Liguris, that they lived of fishing inpile dwelling among scrub and marshes, the Umbro-italic ones followed (or lnsubri), which transformed the miserable village in the principal center of the vast zone that, from them, it had the name of lnsubria.
The Etruschis came after. This civil and advanced people, it worried him about to discipline the course of the rivers, to dry up the swamps and to cultivate the earth.
However, among the various opinions on the origin in Milan, the most approved is that the city was founded by Belloveso, headman of a Gallic's tribe, people that lived beyond the Alps.

The legends of Milan
Many don't know that Milan, as Rome, have his legend on the how and when it was born.

Belloveso
Around 600 years before the birth of Jesus Christ, a king-shepherd called Ambigato lived beyond the Alps.
An evening, in theend of the winter, to the oscillating light of a torch, Ambigato was sat thoughtful under his curtain of skins with his nephews Belloveso and Segoveso, young people with the beautiful and strong aspect and from the long hair color copper. They drank in silence, while the rain continued impetuous and monotonous.
Suddenly the voice of the old King it broke the silence:
" We cannot live here any more " - it said with grieved voice.
" The pastures are scarce and we are too many. We have to look for new grounds for new pastures for our beasts. I was more young I would depart me! The earth there is. It is to us to refuse it and to die, or to look for it and to live. "
Ambigato kept silent for an instant, then he said:
" From the mountaineers I have felt to speak of a fertile ground where the sun is more heat and more alive than ours. This ground is to the east beyond the great white mountains. "
By hand by hand that the old man spoke, the looks of Belloveso and Segoveso illuminated him. The old man had not ended to speak that the young men had already decided to depart. Segoveso set out toward Germany, Belloveso thought about setting out toward regions of Italy.
The voice scattered it and three months later, during the departure, many men of other tribes with their families went to the encampment of Ambigato to follow the two nephews.
So in a beautiful day, the curtains disassembled and the huts abandoned, everything was loaded on the carts.
That of Belloveso was not a tribe but a great crowd (around 130 thousand) of people, men, women and children, ready to begin the great trip toward a new rich earth.
The trip was not easy.Great difficulties delayed the march of that men: snow's storms, deep canyons, mountaintops that seemed inaccessibles. More than few times Belloveso was on the point to come back. Then the words of the old king-shepherd returned in his mind « Earth there is. It is to us to refuse it and to die, or to look for it and to live ». And he took back his courage, while new strengths pushed him, with his people, toward east.
Finally,at the sunrise of a rosy morning, here is to appear the immense lowland: the "Padana Lowland".
When the Gallics went down downstream, they had a first battle with the Taurine, after they battled and rejected the Etruschis, that already occupied the center of that vast territory. The Gallics arrived in the zone that corresponds at the today's Province in Milan and precisely in a place called the Insubris plian. The landscape was not very attractive: marshes dominated anywhere and Belloveso was already about to continue the trip when the Equi's headman said:
" Great Belloveso, let's stop here us. The name of this territory is the same of the country from which I have departed. It will bring luck us. "
The thing seemed to Belloveso of good auspice for which decided to stop here.
By this way, near to the center of the occupied earth (called Insubria) the Gallics raised a rustic village, which the name of Midland was given ( name already used for other places of the Gallia and that it meant « in the middle of the earth»), or better in the middle of the occupied region.
Subsequently the Gallics extended their dominion up to the Alps, to the Mincio and the Po, dominating on that territory that, later, was called by the Romans "Gallia Cisalpina".
This is the most known and diffused legend, but others two are the legends that attribute to other characters the birth in Milan

Tubai
Another very more astonishing legend, is that told by the Milanese "Brother Paul Morigia", lived in the '500.
Brother' Paul says that this « noble and ancient city» was founded 35 years after the Deluge and that is 2900 years before Christ, from Tubai, child of Jafet, third-born of Noè. This Tubai lived 197 years, and he had 90 children and 13.700 nephews.

Brenno
For another legend the origin in Milan is attributed to Brenno, the ferociouschief of the Gallics which, after having sacked Rome, gone up again in northern Italy, he founded in the middle of the Padana Lowland a city which gave the name of "Alba", city that became, subsequently, the Roman Mediolanum.