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The Menapii were a Belgae tribe dwelling near the North Sea, around present-day Cassel, during the Iron Age and the Roman period.
A cohort of Menapian auxiliaries is attested by inscriptions dating to the 2nd century in Roman Britain. Cohors Primae Menapiorum at Roman-Britain.co.uk Carausius, the 3rd century commander of the Roman fleet who declared himself emperor of Britain and northern Gaul, was a Menapian, born in Betuwe.Aurelius Victor, Liber de Caesaribus 39.20 A legion called the Menapii Seniores is mentioned in the Notitia Dignitatum, a 5th-century register of Roman government positions and military commands. Notitia Dignitatum, West, 5
The city of Cassel, attested on Peutinger's Tabula as Castellum Menapiorum ( Cassello in 840–75, Cassel in 1110), is indirectly named after the tribe.
To the north and east of the Menapii lay the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta. In the time of Caesar, the Menapii had settlements throughout this region and as far as the Rhine in present-day Germany, or at least its branch, the Waal.Archaeologist Nico Roymans has announced in 2015 that convincing evidence has been found that the fighting reported by Caesar at the confluence of the Rhine and Maas was in fact in the confluence of Waal, a branch of the Rhine and not the Rhine itself, and the Maas/Meuse, near Kessel. See for example http://www.nationalgeographic.nl/artikel/genocidaire-slachting-onder-leiding-van-julius-caesar-bij-kessel During Roman times these islands were under the frontier province of Germania Inferior, and inhabited partly by various groups of people who had moved there under Roman rule. Pliny the elder lists the people in these "Gallic Islands" as Batavi and Canninefates on the largest island, Frisii and the Chauci whose main lands were to the north of the deltas, and the Frisiavones, Sturii, and Marsacii. Plin. Nat. 4.29 Of these last three, the Marsaci appear to be mentioned in another place by Pliny as having a presence on the coast south of the delta, neighbouring the Menapii, within Gaul itself. Plin. Nat. 4.31 The Frisiavones are also mentioned within the listing for Belgian Gaul, but probably therefore lived in the part of the delta south of the Batavi, northeast of the Menapii. In one inscription, from Bulla Regia, the Tungri, Batavians and Frisiavones are grouped together, apparently confirming that the Frisiavones lived inland. It is suggested that the Marsaci and the Sturii could be "pagus" belonging to the civitas of either the Frisiavones or the Menapii., pages 54 and 63. South of the delta, east of the river Scheldt from the Menapii, and therefore apparently south of the Frisiavones, Pliny mentions the Toxandri, in a position apparently on the northern edge of Gaul. It is known that the Toxandri were associated with the civitates of both the Nervii and the Tungri, so they presumably had a presence in both.
While in Pliny the Menapii do not stretch beyond the Scheldt, in Strabo's 1st-century Geographica, they are situated further away than the Nervii and on both sides of the Rhine near its outlets to the sea, apparently not far from the Germanic Sigambri. Apparently following Caesar he said that they "dwell amongst marshes and forests, not lofty, but consisting of dense and thorny wood".Strabo, Geographica 4:3.4 They are also referred to in Ptolemy's 2nd century Geographia, situated "above" the Nervii, and near the Meuse river.Ptolemy, Geographia 2.8
While these authors make it clear that the Menapii still lay north of the Nervii in Roman times, it is not clear if they still bordered directly upon the former territory of the Eburones, as they had been in Caesar's time, and which in imperial times was within the Civitas Tungrorum, or civitas of the Tungri. In any case as mentioned above they bordered in Roman times upon the Toxandrians, who apparently lived in the north of the lands of the Nervii and Tungri.
South of the Menapii were the Atrebates in Artois, and south-west along the coast were the Morini. The boundary with the Morini in classical times appears to have been the river Aa.
In the later Roman Empire, The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites reports that "Cassel was superseded as capital of the Menapii by Tournai after Gaul was reorganized under Diocletian and Constantine the Great. The civitas Menapiorum became the civitas Turnencensium." By medieval times, when these Roman districts evolved into medieval Roman Catholic dioceses, Cassel had in fact become part of the diocese of Thérouanne, which had been the civitas of the Morini.
Settlements
Their civitas, or administrative capital, under the Roman Empire was Cassel in northern France, and later this was moved nearer to a river in Tournai, in present-day Belgium, on the Scheldt. 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 Catholic 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.
Economy
The economic activity of the Menapii was primarily from sheep's wool and the fabrication of primitive cloths, activities perfected during the Roman control of the region. These cloths were one of the most rare things in terms of goods, because of the geographical location where they were made. Besides, these cloths were exported to Italy and other regions through the Rhine.
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