Galatians (people)

'Gauls') were a Celtic people dwelling in Galatia, a region of central Anatolia in modern-day Turkey surrounding Ankara during the Hellenistic period.

Seeing something of a Hellenized savage in the Galatians, Francis Bacon and other Renaissance writers called them Gallo-Graeci ('Gauls settled among the Greeks') and the country Gallo-Graecia, as had the 3rd century AD Latin historian Justin.

In 277 BC, when the hostilities had ended the Galatians came out of Nikomedes' control and began raiding Greek cities in Asia Minor while Antiochus was solidifying his rule in Syria.

The Galatians looted Cyzikus, Ilion, Didyma, Priene, Thyatira and Laodicea on the Lycus, while the citizens of Erythras paid them ransom.

[7] The Seleucids built a series of forts at Thyatira, Akrasos and Nakrason and placed garrisons at Seleucia Sidera, Apamea, Antioch of Pisidia, Laodicea on the Lycus, Hierapolis, Peltos and Vlandos to limit Galatian raids.

However, the Galatians expanded beyond those borders taking control of important cities such as Ancyra (present day Ankara), Pessinus, Tavium, and Gordion.

[9] The constitution of the Galatian state is described by Strabo: comfortably to custom, each tribe was divided into cantons, each governed by a tetrarch 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 south-west of Ancyra, written in Ancient Greek: Δρυνεμετον, romanized: Drunemeton/Drynemeton, lit.

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 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.

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.

Dying Gaul , Roman copy of a Hellenistic sculpture of a dying Galatian warrior, wearing a torc . Capitoline Museums .
Original location of the Tectosages in Gaul .
A Galatian's head as depicted on a gold Thracian objet d'art , 3rd century BC. 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.