Melampus the Diviner was a Greek author who lived and wrote during the Roman Imperial period, likely in the 1st or 2nd century CE. His exact dates, birthplace, and personal history are not recorded. He wrote under the name Melampus, which was traditionally associated with a mythical Greek seer, a common practice to lend authority to technical writings of the time.

He is known for writing systematic handbooks on divination, a field considered a technical science in the ancient world. His only definitively surviving work is a treatise titled On Divination by Bodily Signs (also referred to as On Palmistry). This text methodically explains how to foretell the future by interpreting physical characteristics, particularly the lines on a person’s hands and other bodily marks.

According to modern scholars, his work is a valuable example of how popular divinatory practices, like palm-reading, were formalized into written technical literature. It provides important insight into the blend of empirical observation and traditional belief in the Greco-Roman world. The treatise illustrates the broader cultural interest in compiling and systematizing knowledge during the Roman era.