GALATIA

In the course of centuries, gallic tribes, related to those that invaded Italy and sacked Rome, wandered east through Illyricum and Pannonia. At length they penetrated through Macedonia (279 B.C.), and assembled in great numbers under a prince entitled Brennus, for the purpose of invading Greece and plundering the rich temple of Delphi. The leaders disagreed and the host soon divided, one portion, under Brennus, marching south on Delphi: the other division, under Leonorius and Luterius, turned eastward and overran Thrace, the country round Byzantium. Shortly afterwards they were joined by the small remnants of the army of Brennus, who was repulsed by the Greeks, and killed himself in despair. In 278 B.C., 20,000 Gauls, under Leonorius, Luterius, and fifteen other chieftains, crossed over to Asia Minor, in two divisions. On reuniting they assisted Nicomedes I, King of Bithynia, to defeat his younger brother; and as a reward for their services he gave them a large tract of country, in the heart of Asia Minor, henceforward to be known as Galatia.

The Galatians consisted of three tribes:

* the Tolistboboii, on the west, with Pessinus as their chief town;
* the Tectosages, in the centre, with their capital Ancyra; and
* the Trocmi, on the east, round their chief town Tavium.

Each tribal territory was divided into four cantons or tetrarchies. Each of the twelve tetrarchs had under him a judge and a general. A council of the nation consisting of the tetararchs and three hundred senators was periodically held at a place called Drynemeton, twenty miles southwest of Ancyra.

That these people were Gauls (and not Germans as has sometimes been suggested) is proved by the testimony of Greek and Latin writers, by their retention of the Gallic language till the fifth century, and by their personal and place names. A tribe in the west of Gaul in the time of Caesar (Bell. Gall., VI, xxiv) was called Tectosages. In Tolistoboii we have the root of the word Toulouse, and in Boii the well known Gallic tribe. Brennus probably meant prince; and Strabo says he was called Prausus, which in Celtic means terrible. Luterius is the same as the Celtic Lucterius, and there was a British saint called Leonorius. Other names of chieftains are of undoubted Gallic origin, e.g. Belgius, Achichorius, Gaezatio-Diastus. Brogoris (same root as Brogitarus, Allobroges), Bitovitus, Eposognatus (compare Caesar's Boduognatus, etc.), Combolomarus (Caesar has Virdomarus, Indutionmarus), Adiorix, Albiorix, Ateporix (like Caresar's Dumnorix, ambbiorix, Vercingetorix), Brogitarus, Deiotarus, etc. Place names are of a similar character, e.g. Drynemeton, the "temple of the oaks" or The Temple, from nemed, "temple" (compare Augustonemetum in Auvergene, and Vernemeton, "the great temple", near Bordeaux), Eccobriga, Rosologiacum, Teutobodiacum, etc. (For a detailed discussion of the question see Lightfoot's "Galatians", dissertation i, 4th ed., London, 1874, 235.)

As soon as these Gauls, or Galatians, had gained a firm footing in the country assigned to them, they began to send out marauding expeditions in all directions. They became the terror of their neighbours, and levied contributions on the whole of Asia Minor west of the Taurus. They fought with varying success against Antiochus, King of Syria, who was called Soter from his having saved his country from them. At length Attlaus I, King of Pergamun, a friend of the Romans, drove them back and confined them to Galatia about 235-232 B.C. After this many of them became mercenary soldiers; and in the great battle of Magnesia, 180 B.C., a body of such Galatian troops fought against the Romans, on the side of Antiochus the Great, King of Syria. He was utterly defeated by the Romans, under Scipio Asiaticus, and lost 50,000 of his men. Next year the Consul Manlius entered Galatia, and defeated the Galatians in two battles graphically described by Livy, XXXVIII, xvi. These events are referred to in I Mach., viii. On account of ill-treatment received at the hands of Mithradates I King of Pontus, the Galatians took the side of Pompey in the Mitradatic wars (64 B.C.). As a reward for their services, Deiotarus, their chief tetrarch, received the title of king, and his dominions were greatly extended. Henceword the Galatians were under the protection of the Romans, and were involved in all the troubles of the civil wars that followed. They supported Pompey against Julius Caesar at the battle of Pharsalia (48 B.C.). Amyntas, their last king was set up by Mark Antony, 39 B.C. His kingdom finally included not only Galatia Proper but also the great plains to the south, together with parts of Lyesonia, Pamphylia, Pisidia, and Phrygia, i.e. the country containing the towns Antioch, Iconium, Lystra and Derbe. Amyntas went to Actium, 31 B.C., to support Mark Antony; but like many others he went over, at the critical moment, to the side of Octavianus, afterwards called Augustus. Augustus confirmed him in his kingdom, which he retained until he was slain in ambush, 25 B.C. After the death of Amyntas, Augustus made this kingdom into the Roman province of Galatia, so that this province had ben in existence more than 75 years when St. Paul wrote to the Galatians.

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After fifty years or so as mercenaries in the service of different factions and as raiders in their own right, they were eventually settled in Phyrgia in the vincinity of Ankara.

The Galatians by this time must have become ethnically mixed. The elite lineages may well have been descended from thee original migrant families of two generations past, but the indigenous population of Phyrgia will now have been absorbed, if only in a subservient position, into the Galatian state.

How long this essentially Celtic system of social organization lasted among the Galatians is difficult to say. Strabo, writing about the turn of the millenium, specifically mentions that in his time power had passed first to three rulers, then to two, and finally to one, in contrast to 'the organization of Galatia long ago'. This may have been as a result of Roman encouragement or duress, but there are clear signs of change earlier. In 189 BC we learn that Ortagion, a chief of the Tolistoboii, wanted to unite the Galatians under his leadership, but his attempts met with little success and a few years later a number of social units are mentioned each with its own chiefs.

A century later the old system of tetrachs still appears to have been in force. The glimpse is provided by a treacherous incident orchestrated by Mithridates IV. In 88 BC, in a bid to take control of Asia Minor, he effectively destroyed Galatian opposition by inviting thee Galatian chiefs to meet him at Pergamum. Of the sixty who turned up all but one were massacred. Those who did not attend were picked off in individual attacks, only three tetrarchs managing to escape.

The massacre of the tetrarchs may well have been the deciding factor in bringing about far-reaching changes in the old social order. Not only did it greatly weaken the ruling elite, but it showed that divided leadership was inefficient in dealing with the problems of a rapidly changing world. Perhaps even more important was that the incident drove the Galatians to the Roman side, and it was in the interests of the Roman state to encourage a more unified leadership.

Very little is known of Galatian ritual or religion. The existence of Drunemetom is a hint that sacred locations existed, presided over, perhaps, by a Druidic priesthood, but there is no direct evidence of this. What is clear is that the indigenous cults were assimilated by the Celts. Such was the case of the worship of the Mother Goddess at Pessinus. In the late second century BC the high priest, known by the ritual name of Attis, was a Celt whose brother, Aiorix, bore a characteristically Celtic namee. It is evident from a later, Roman, inscription that half the college of priests at the temple were of Celtic birth. The sanctuary at Pessinus was, however, a thoroughly hellenized place. Strabo refers to it as having been built up by the Pergamese kings 'in a manner befitting a holy place with a sanctuary and also with porticoes of white marble'. Yet, in spite of their acceptance of native cults and practices, the Galatians could revert to a more typically barbarous practicee, as they did in 165 BC when, following the conclusion of a war with Eumenes, the most important of the prisoners were sacrificed to the gods, while the the less favoured were dispatched by spearing. In this incident we may be witnessing a resurgence of the Celtic belief in the need to sacrifice the best of the spoils of war to the deities.

The fighting practices of the Galatians were, as we have seen, vividly depicted by Pergamene artists in an array of victory monuments. Their fierceness and ferocity in battle were legendary. In 189 BC a Roman army, under the command of Cn. Manlius Vulso, moved against the Tolistobogii and Trocmi and won a decisive victory at Olympus near Pessinus. Livy gives a detailed account of the engagement using the occasion to provide his reader with a series of familiar stereotypes about the Celt as a fighting man. Thus from the mouth of the commander, in his set-piece pre-battle oration, cmes direct reference to the incidents from the Celtic invasion of Italy in the fourth century. That Livy should emphasize the comparison in this way shows, at the very least, that he was acutely aware of the similarities of the two peoples, even though he may have overstressed or oversimplified them. Yet even allowing for these potential distortions, several interesting points emerge. The Galatians, it appears, were still using rather archaic type of Celtic shield, 'long, but not wide enough for the size of their bodies and...flat in surface', and they still adopted the practice of fighting naked, a point vividly described by Livy: 'Their wounds were plain to see because they fight naked and their bodies are plump and white since they are never exposed except in battle.' There is no reason to suppose that these observations were not specific to the event. Together they show that patterns of behaviour in battle had changed little, in spite of nearly a century of experience in Asia Minor. Even so, Livy could report the commandeer as saying: 'The Gauls here are by now degenerate, a mixed race, truly described by their name Gallogrecians.'

(Cunliffe, 178)