page_title: Galatians (people)
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Galatians (people) / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Galatian_object_3rd_century_BCE_Bolu_Hidirsihlar_tumulus.
context_page_description: The Galatians were a Gallic people of the Hellenistic period that dwelt mainly in the north central regions of Asia Minor or Anatolia, in what was known as Galatia, in today's Turkey. In their origin they were a part of the great migration which invaded Macedon, led by Brennus. The originals who settled in Galatia came through Thrace under the leadership of Leotarios and Leonnorios c. 278 BC. They consisted mainly of three tribes, the Tectosages, the Trocmii, and the Tolistobogii, but there were also other minor tribes. They spoke a Celtic language, the Galatian language, which is sparsely attested.
  In the 1st century AD, many Galatians of the Roman Empire were Christianized by Paul the Apostle's missionary activities. The Epistle to the Galatians by Paul the Apostle is addressed to Galatian Christian communities and is preserved in the Bible.
context_section_description: 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. The more usual term was Ancient Greek: Ἑλληνογαλάται, 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.
  Brennus invaded Greece in 281 BC with a huge war band and was turned back before he could plunder the temple of Apollo at Delphi. At the same time, another Gaulish group of men, women, and children were migrating through Thrace. They had split off from Brennus' people in 279 BC, and had migrated into Thrace under their leaders Leonnorius and Lutarius. These invaders appeared in Asia Minor in 278–277 BC; others invaded Macedonia, killed the Ptolemaic ruler Ptolemy Ceraunus but were eventually ousted by Antigonus Gonatas, the grandson of the defeated Diadoch Antigonus the One-Eyed.
  During the course of the power struggle between Nikomedes I of Bithynia and his brother Zipoetes, the former hired 20,000 Galatian mercenaries. The Galatians split into two groups headed by Leonnorius and Lutarius, which crossed the Bosporus and the Hellespont respectively. 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. 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.
  The Seleucids build 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. They launched further raids into Bithynia, Heracleia and the Pontus in both 255 and 250 BC. Either in 240 or 230 BC Attalus I 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.
  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. 'holy place of oak'. It is likely it was a sacred oak grove, since the name means 'sanctuary of the oaks' in 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 (illustration, below). 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 s
caption: Galatian object, 3rd century BC, Hidirsihlar tumulus, Bolu. Istanbul Archaeological Museum.
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