Encyclopedia
Ancient
Galatia was an area in the highlands of central
Anatolia in modern
Turkey. Galatia was bounded on the north by
Bithynia and Paphlagonia, on the east by
Pontus, on the south by Lycaonia and
Cappadocia, and on the west by the remainder of
Phrygia, the eastern part of which the
Gauls had invaded. The modern capital of Turkey,
Ankara , lies in ancient Galatia.
Celtic Galatia
Galatia was named for the immigrant Gauls from
Thrace, who became its ruling caste in the
3rd century BCE. It has been called the "Gallia" of the East, Roman writers calling its inhabitants
Galli. They were an intermixture of Gauls and Greeks, and hence
Francis Bacon and other Renaissance writers called them "Gallo-Graeci," and the country "Gallo-Graecia".
The Galatians were in their origin a part of that great
Celtic migration which invaded
Macedon, led by the 'second'
Brennus, a Gaulish chief. He invaded Greece in 281 BCE with a huge warband and was turned back in the nick of time from plundering the temple of Apollo at
Delphi. At the same time, another Gaulish group were migrating with their women and children through Thrace. They had split off from Brennus' Gauls in 279 BCE, and had migrated into Thrace under their leaders Leonnorius and Lutarius. These Gaulish invaders appeared in Asia Minor in 278–277 BCE; others invaded Macedonia, killed the
Ptolemaic king Ptolemy Ceraunus but were eventually ousted by
Antigonus Gonatas, the grandson of the defeated
diadoch Antigonus the One-Eyed.
As so often happens in cases of invasion, the invaders came at the express invitation of Nicomedes I of Bithynia, who required help in a dynastic struggle against his brother. Three tribes of Gauls crossed over from Thrace to Asia Minor. They numbered about 10,000 fighting men and about the same number of women and children, divided into three tribes, Trocmi, Tolistobogii and Tectosages. They were eventually defeated by the
Seleucid king
Antiochus I, in a battle where the Seleucid war elephants shocked the Celts. While breaking the momentum of the invasion, the Galatians were by no means exterminated.
Instead, the migration led to the establishment of a long-lived Gaulish territory in central
Anatolia, which included the eastern part of ancient
Phrygia, a territory that became known as Galatia. There they ultimately settled, and being strengthened by fresh accessions of the same clan from Europe, they overran
Bithynia and supported themselves by plundering neighbouring countries.
The constitution of the Galatian state is described by
Strabo: conformably to Gaulish custom, each tribe was divided into cantons, each governed by a chief of its own with a judge under him, whose powers were unlimited except in cases of murder, which were tried before a council of 300 drawn from the twelve cantons and meeting at a holy place, twenty miles southwest of Ancyra, which was likely to have been a sacred oak grove, for it was called 'Drynemeton' the "fane of the oaks"
drys +
nemeton "sacred ground". The local population of Cappadocians were left in control of the towns and most of the land, paying tithes to their new overlords, who formed a military aristocracy and kept aloof in fortified farmsteads, surrounded by their bands.
The Gauls were great warriors, respected by Greeks and Romans . They hired themselves out as mercenary soldiers, sometimes fighting on both sides in the great battles of the times. For years the Gaulish chieftains and their warbands ravaged the western half of Asia Minor, as allies of one or other of the warring princes, without any serious check, until they sided with the renegade Seleucid prince Antiochus Hierax, who reigned in
Asia Minor. Hierax tried to defeat king
Attalus I of Pergamum , but instead, the hellenised cities united under his banner, and his armies inflicted several severe defeats upon them, about 232 forcing them to settle permanently and to confine themselves to the region to which they had already given their name. The theme of the
Dying Gaul remained a favorite in Hellenistic art for a generation. Their right to the district was formally recognized. The three Gaulish tribes were settled where they afterwards remained, the Tectosages round Ancyra, the Tolistobogii round Pessinus, sacred to
Cybele, and the Trocmi round Tavium.
But the power of the Gauls was not yet broken. The Attalid Pergamene king himself soon employed their services in the increasingly devastating wars of Asia Minor; another band deserted from their Egyptian overlord
Ptolemy IV after a
solar eclipse had broken their spirits.
In the early 2nd century BCE they proved terrible allies of
Antiochus the Great, the last Seleucid king trying to regain suzerainity over Asia Minor, but after the defeat of the Seleucid king to the Romans, Rome at last proved a worthy protection against them.
In 189 BCE an expedition was sent against them under Caius Manlius Vulso, who defeated them. Henceforward their military power declined and they fell at times under
Pontic ascendancy, from which they were finally freed by the Mithridatic Wars, in which they heartily supported Rome.
In the settlement of 64 BCE Galatia became a client-state of the Roman empire, the old constitution disappeared, and three chiefs were appointed, one for each tribe. But this arrangement soon gave way before the ambition of one of these tetrarchs, Deiotarus, the contemporary of
Cicero and
Julius Caesar, who made himself master of the other two tetrarchies and was finally recognized by the Romans as 'king' of Galatia.
Roman and Christian Galatia
On the death of the third king Amyntas in 25 BCE, however, Galatia was incorporated by Octavian Augustus in the
Roman empire, though near his capital Ancyra Pylamenes, the king's heir, rebuilt a temple of the Phrygian goddess
Men to venerate Augustus , as a sign of fidelity. It was on the walls of this temple in Galatia that the major source for the Res Gestae of Augustus were preserved for modernity. Few of the provinces proved more enthusiastically loyal to Rome. The Galatians also practiced a form of Romano-Celtic polytheism, common in Celtic lands.
During his second missionary journey
Paul, accompanied by Silas and Timothy , visited the "region of Galatia," where he was detained by sickness , and had thus the longer opportunity of preaching to them the gospel. On his third journey he went over "all the country of Galatia and
Phrygia in order" . During the journeys of Paul he was received with enthusiasm in Galatia. In
Acts, xvi, 6 and xviii, 23:"And they went through the Phrygian and Galatian region" and "he departed and went through the Galatian region and Phrygia" . The Galatians were fickle; at Lystra the multitude could scarcely be restrained from sacrificing to Paul ; shortly afterwards they stoned him and left him for dead. Crescens was sent thither by Paul toward the close of his life .
Josephus related the biblical figure Gomer to Galatia. "For Gomer founded those whom the Greeks now call Galatians, [Galls,] but were then called Gomerites." Antiquities of the Jews, I:6. Although others have related Gomer to
Cimmerians.
The Galatians were still speaking the
Celtic Galatian language in the time of St.
Jerome , who wrote that the Galatians of
Ancyra and the Treveri of
Trier spoke the same
language.
In an administrative reorganisation about 386-95 two new provinces succeeded it,
Galatia Prima and Galatia Secunda or - Salutaris, which included part of
Phrygia.
The fate of the Galatian people is a subject of some uncertainty, but they seem ultimately to have been absorbed into the Greek- and/or
Turkish-speaking populations of west-central Anatolia.
Notes
External links
- David Rankin, 1996. Celts and the Classical World : Chapter 9 "The Galatians"
- Livy
- Polybius
- Strabo
- Pliny's Natural History 5.42
- Stephen Mitchell, 1993. Anatolia: Land, Men, and Gods in Asia Minor vol. 1: "The Celts and the Impact of Roman Rule." 1993. ISBN 0-19-814080-0. Concentrates on Galatia; volume 2 covers " "The Rise of the Church".
