Galatians (people)

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
This article is about Hellenistic-period Gauls in Anatolia. For the book of the New Testament, see Epistle to the Galatians. For Gauls in general, see Gauls.
Dying Gaul, Roman copy of a Hellenistic sculpture of a dying Galatian warrior, wearing a torc. Capitoline Museums.

The Galatians (

Gaulish, a contemporary Celtic language spoken in Gaul.[2][3]

The Galatians were descended from Celts who had

Trocmii, and the Tolistobogii, but there were also other minor tribes. In 25 BC, Galatia became a province of the Roman Empire, with Ankara
(Ancyra) as its capital.

In the 1st century AD, many Galatians were Christianized by Paul the Apostle's missionary activities. The Epistle to the Galatians by Paul the Apostle is addressed to Galatian Christian communities in Galatia and is preserved in the New Testament.

History

Main article: Galatia
Original location of the Tectosages in Gaul.
Istanbul Archaeological Museum
.
Galatian bronze horse bit, 3rd century BC, Hidirsihlar tumulus, Bolu. Istanbul Archaeological Museum.
Galatian bracelets and earrings, 3rd century BC, Hidirsihlar tumulus, Bolu. Istanbul Archaeological Museum.
Galatian torcs, 3rd century BC, Hidirsihlar tumulus, Bolu. Istanbul Archaeological Museum.
Galatian plate, 3rd century BC, Hidirsihlar tumulus, Bolu. Istanbul Archaeological Museum.
Galatian object, 3rd century BC, Hidirsihlar tumulus, Bolu. Istanbul Archaeological Museum.

Seeing something of a Hellenized savage in the Galatians,

romanized: Hellēnogalátai of Diodorus Siculus' Bibliotheca historica v.32.5, in a passage that is translated "...and were called Gallo-Graeci because of their connection with the Greeks", identifying Galatia in the Greek East as opposed to Gaul in the West.[5] Suda also used the term Hellenogalatai.[6]

Diadoch Antigonus the One-Eyed
.

During the course of the power struggle between

Cyzikus, Ilion, Didyma, Priene, Thyatira and Laodicea on the Lycus, while the citizens of Erythras paid them ransom. Either in 275 or 269 BC Antiochus' army faced the Galatians somewhere on the plain of Sardis in the Battle of Elephants. In the aftermath of the battle the Celts settled in northern Phrygia
, a region that eventually came to be known as Galatia. [7]

The Seleucids built a series of forts at Thyatira, Akrasos and Nakrason and placed garrisons at

Gordion. They launched further raids into Bithynia, Heracleia and the Pontus in both 255 and 250 BC.[8] Either in 240 or 230 BC Attalus I of Pergamon inflicted a heavy defeat on the Galatians at the Battle of the Caecus River. In 216 BC, Prusias I of Bithynia intervened to protect the cities of the Hellespont from Galatian raids. In 190s BC, the Galatians raided Lampsacus and Heraclea Pontica. According to Memnon of Heraclea their goal was to gain access to the sea; however, this claim is disputed by modern historiography.[9]

The constitution of the Galatian state is described by

Gaulish: *dru-nemeton (from drus, lit. 'oak', and nemeton, lit.
'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.

These Galatians were warriors, respected by Greeks and Romans. They were often hired as mercenary soldiers, sometimes fighting on both sides in the great battles of the times. For years the chieftains and their war bands 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

Pergamon (241–197 BC), but instead the Hellenized cities united under Attalus' banner and his armies inflicted several severe defeats upon Hierax and the Galatians in c. 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 (a famous statue displayed in Pergamon
) remained a favourite in Hellenistic art for a generation.

The king of Attalid Pergamon 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.[citation needed
]

In 189 BC, Rome sent Gnaeus Manlius Vulso on an expedition against the Galatians, the Galatian War, defeating them. Galatia was henceforth dominated by Rome through regional rulers from 189 BC onward. Galatia declined, at times falling under Pontic ascendancy. They were finally freed by the Mithridatic Wars, during which they supported Rome.

In the settlement of 64 BC, Galatia became a client-state of the Roman empire, the old constitution disappeared, and three chiefs (wrongly styled 'tetrarchs') 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.

Tribes

Each tribal territory was divided into four

senators
was periodically held at Drynemeton.

There were also the:

Religion

Comparatively little is known about Galatian religion, but it can be assumed that it was similar to that of most Celts. The Greek god Telesphorus has attributes not seen in other Greek gods, and it is speculated to have been imported from Galatia.[11]

See also

Notes

  1. ISBN 978-0-19-954854-5
    . A Gallic, i.e. Celtic, people who crossed the Hellespont from Europe into Asia Minor in 278 BC and settled in parts of Phrygia and Cappadocia, in the area surrounding modern Ankara in central Turkey.
  2. ISBN 978-0-88946-085-0
    .
  3. S2CID 199576252
    . Galatian has usually been conceived of as a variety of Celtic similar to that of Transalpine Gaul ...
  4. ^ Justin, Epitome of Pompeius Trogus, 25.2 and 26.2; the related subject of copulative compounds, where both are of equal weight, is exhaustively treated in Anna Granville Hatcher, Modern English Word-Formation and Neo-Latin: A Study of the Origins of English (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University), 1951.
  5. ^ This distinction is remarked upon in William M. Ramsay (revised by Mark W. Wilson), Historical Commentary on Galatians 1997:302; Ramsay notes the 4th century AD Paphlagonian Themistius' usage Γαλατίᾳ τῇ Ἑλληνίδι.
  6. ^ Suda, alpha, 259
  7. ^ Sartre 2006, pp. 128, 77.
  8. ^ Sartre 2006, p. 129.
  9. ^ Sartre 2006, p. 130.
  10. ^ a b c d e f Prifysgol Cymru, University of Wales, A Detailed Map of Settlements in Galatia, Names and La Tène Material in Anatolia, the Eastern Balkans, and the Pontic Steppes.
  11. ^ Henri Lavagne, Les Dieux de la Gaule romaine, Luxembourg, 1989.

Sources

  • Sartre, Maurice (2006). Ελληνιστική Μικρασία: Aπο το Αιγαίο ως τον Καύκασο [Hellenistic Asia Minor: From the Aegean to the Caucaus] (in Greek). Athens: Ekdoseis Pataki.
    ISBN 9789601617565
    .

External links

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