Chapter 3
Brennos and his men moved on south from Macedon, first into Thessaly, and then into central Greece. This may have been their plan from the start of the campaign, but they will have known that they would have to fight a battle to get through Macedon – the Macedonians, especially under their new general, were not going to be as amenable as the Dardanians and allow them a clear passage. Having won the victory, the Galatians naturally looked for loot and supplies, but it does not seem likely that they had stayed around in Macedon for very long; no doubt both those items were in short supply, given that the Macedonians had had fair warning of the enemy’s approach. Brennos did suggest that the temples might provide useful loot – unless this is a Greek invention, to emphasize the Galatians’ irreligion. The lack of loot propelled the Galatians to go further south into Greece.
In Thessaly they are said to have committed ‘outrages’, which might be anything from massacres to stealing food and valuables, or even just being present.1 Thessalian society was of the feudal type, lords and serfs; it is likely that the lords holed up in their castles and cities, leaving the peasantry to suffer from the outrages. In a sign that some of the Greeks were actually not that different from the Dardanians and Illyrians in their attitude to the Galatians, some Thessalians joined them in their march, either by treaty or by compulsion, but certainly in the search for loot at the expense of other Greeks.2 It was one more element in the ethnic mix of the invaders. South of Thessaly they approached the Greek defensive army.
The news of the renewed invasion had galvanized some of the Greeks into a moment of unaccustomed cooperation; possibly it was the Demochares who spread the alarm.3 All the peoples from Phokis to the Isthmus sent contingents to block the pass at Thermopylai, and, since Brennos and his people took their time about looting Macedon and Thessaly, the Greek forces managed to reach the pass first, while the Galatians were still in the Phthiotis and Magnesia, to the south and west of Thessaly. The Boiotians and the Aitolians were the most numerous contingents in the Greek array, for they, with the Phokians, would be the most immediately threatened once the invaders came further south; it is evident that Delphi was seen to be the most likely target.
Between the Phokians and Thessaly, and so between the Greek force which concentrated at Thermopylai and the approaching Galatians, there were the small communities about the Malian Gulf and in the valley of the Spercheios River – the Malians and the Ainianians. They were left outside the Greek defended region, and so had no choice but to submit to the invaders if they were to survive. Like some of the Thessalians, they were compelled to submit and then to participate. Also directly threatened was the Aitolian country, which stretched right across the Greek peninsula as far as Herakleia Trachineia on the south coast of the Malian Gulf, but north of Thermopylai, and therefore also vulnerable and outside the Greeks’ defence line. The league produced 7000 hoplite infantry, 790 light infantry, and some cavalry for the defence. Athens, which under the domination of King Antigonos had been largely disarmed, produced 1000 hoplites and 500 cavalry under the command of Kallippos son of Moirokles of Eleusis, a noted contemporary politician. At this point we come up against Pausanias’ tendency to distortion. He interpreted the Galatian invasion as a sort of repetition of that of the Persians, and used the events of that time as his template for the fight against the Galatians. He therefore exaggerated the Athenian participation, inventing, it seems, an Athenian warship squadron, and assigning the command over the whole allied force to Kallippos, even though the contingent he brought was one of the smallest. In fact, it was probably an Aitolian, if anyone, who was in overall command, though it may be that the commanders of the larger contingents were unwilling to serve under each other. In the event whoever exercised the overall command could not control the several contingents.
An appeal had gone out also to the kings. Antigonos contributed 500 mercenary infantry. He was, of course, in control of Peiraios, and if any ships were involved they were probably his; possibly Pausanias transferred Antigonos’ ships to Athens, but in fact there was really no role for warships in the events. Pausanias says that Antigonos’ troops were from Macedon, but Antigonos was not yet in control there, so they were his own troops, from the garrison at Peiraios, or perhaps from his city of Demetrias in Magnesia, but almost entirely mercenaries. King Antiochos also sent 500 mercenaries.4 Neither of these contingents was generous, but all the kings had other, and more serious, concerns – one of which was the situation in Macedon, which certainly excited their cupidity.
The self-centredness of all Greek states was only superficially surrendered by the gathering of this defending force. One reason for the joint army being formed is that it was meeting at Thermopylai, which had a distinct historical resonance (and was perhaps Pausanias point of reference in his reinterpretation), but more to the point it was a narrow pass, between the sea and the mountains, in which the Greek spearmen could concentrate and fight most effectively. Refugees and reporters will have already explained the Galatian techniques of warfare, which much resembled the ‘Highland charge’ of the Scottish clans in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This was effective in open country, and against poorly disciplined or outnumbered enemies, but against a well-disciplined army without flanks to turn, it generally failed (as it did at Culloden). But, as more than one Greek army at Thermopylai has discovered, flanks there can usually be turned.
The Greeks had assembled in the pass well before the Galatians came near it. They were thus able to send out a force of cavalry and light infantry to block the crossings of the Spercheios, and to break the bridges over the river. This certainly delayed the invaders, but not for very long. A selected force of Galatian swimmers crossed the river and got through the marshes at the estuary, while others floated over on their large oval shields (made of wood and hide), whilst still more found the water shallow enough to let them wade across. This was all sufficiently unexpected to drive off the Greek reconnaissance force. Presumably the fact that the Greeks tended to wear heavy armour prevented them exercising their military imagination – swimming and floating across were surely obvious expedients.
The Greeks retreated back to the camp in the pass, no doubt by prearrangement, for they could not have expected to block the huge Galatian army for very long at the river with such a small force. The Malians hastily repaired the bridges, so as to make sure that the invaders would move away out of their territory. Once across this river the Galatians were in Aitolian territory. This was an area, Oitia and the city of Herakleia, which had been incorporated in the league only a year or so before, perhaps in the knowledge that the Galatians were coming. The land was ravaged, but Herakleia was defended with vigour. This seems to have surprised the Greeks, an emotion which is evident in Pausanias’ account,5 but the city had joined the Aitolian League only the year before: the Aitolian defenders were on their mettle. In fact, the Galatian attack on the city was less than determined. Brennos knew that it was not a major objective, and most of his force simply went past the city to attack the Greeks in the pass.
Brennos had been informed about the Greek position by deserters from the Greek army, perhaps by men captured from the advanced force at the Spercheios, or by the Ainianians or the Malians, but any Greek will have known where the army would assemble, and it would not take a long reconnaissance for the Galatians to find them. It was here that the Galatian method of war, a reckless charge, was less than sensible. The Greeks, with the mountains on their left held by light infantry, and the sea on their right (with or without ships present), were irremovable. His men having suffered serious casualties, Brennos withdrew them back to the Spercheios valley.6
Brennos gave his men a week’s rest while investigating the possibilities. He clearly appreciated the fragility of the Greek coalition. The willingness of the Thessalians and the Ainianians to join him, and of the Malians to assist him in moving the Galatians out of their territory, made it clear that the Greeks were fundamentally divided, that their loyalty was primarily, even exclusively, to their own city, and that a threat to the homeland of one of the group could compel its contingent in the pass to head for home. The obvious victim must be Aitolia, which lay mainly to the west, whereas the rest of the contingents of the allied army came from cities to the south, out of reach behind the pass. The Aitolians had contributed one of the largest contingents to the joint army and so their removal would significantly weaken the whole force. He attempted first to get a contingent over Mount Oitia, from where it would be able to attack Doris and then reached Amphissa and so Delphi, but the sanctuary of Athene above the town of Trachis was held by a force commanded by Telesarchos, the commander of the Seleukid contingent which had been sent by King Antiochos. They successfully defended the temple, and therefore continued to block the route south, though Telesarchos himself was killed.7
Once again the talent for Greek particularism came to Brennos’ aid. His army had spread up the Spercheios valley, into the country of the Ainianians. Their leaders, and the Thessalians, urged him onward, showing him another route into Aitolia further west – neither the Ainianians nor the Thessalians had any liking for the Aitolians. This time the invading force was large (as opposed to the apparently small force at Trachis). Commanded by two of the Galatian chiefs, Orestorios and Komboutis, an army of ‘40,000’ infantry and 800 cavalry – Greek calculations as usual are not to be believed – climbed out of the Spercheios valley and came down onto the Aitolian city of Kallion.
The city and the league were taken by surprise – another failure of military imagination; since at Oitia the enemy had tried one outflanking move, and since Thermopylai was notorious for such a possibility, one would have expected a guard, or at least a picquet, would be placed to cover all possible outflanking routes. The Galatians took the city, then behaved with revolting cruelty, or so the Aitolians claimed, and burnt the city. This was all Aitolian territory, the land of the Apodotoi, though the people are referred to as Kallians, a sign perhaps of the recent urbanization of the area. They resisted, of course, and as word spread of the Galatian atrocities, or perhaps simply of the invasion of their land, the whole Aitolian population, old and young, men and women, set out to punish the invaders, in a quite remarkable display of fury and resolution. This included the Aitolian contingent at Thermopylai, which decamped at once to assist their people as soon as they heard the news. So far, therefore, Brennos’ strategy of outflanking and deliberately provocative destruction was working.
In fact, the Galatians, under attack, turned to retreat by the way they had come. On the way they met and defeated a detachment of Achaian hoplites from Patrai, who were separated from the main force, or perhaps were still on their way to Thermopylai. This fight, however, delayed the Galatians – which supports the view that this Galatian detachment was not really all that large after all, and certainly not anywhere near as large as Pausanias claimed – who may have been using a self-glorifying Aitolian account, or an Achaian.8 The Aitolians occupied the hills, as they had done in earlier crises of invasion (by the Macedonians), and rained stones, boulders, javelins, and arrows down on the retreating enemy. They harassed them so ferociously on that retreat that the invaders lost, so it is said, half their number, though one must assume that the losses fell disproportionately on the infantry.9
The Greeks at Thermopylai, though weakened by the withdrawal of the Aitolians, still blocked the route through the pass. But Brennos’ strategy of evasion, misdirection, and seeking out alternative routes, had worked once, and he convinced some Ainianians to reveal the old route to the hills which the Persians had found two centuries before. It was guarded by a Phokian contingent, but they were unsighted by a mist, outnumbered, and defeated. They did manage to warn the main army down in the pass, however, that the way had been left open, and the main army broke up, each contingent retreating to its home territory.
Brennos had sent Akichorios and his force to preoccupy the main Greek army, and see if and when it disintegrated, while he took a large part of the Galatians first against the Phokians and then towards Delphi. He was clearly aware that the Aitolians had been thoroughly aroused by the attack on Kallion, but his strategy of compelling the enemy army to break up had clearly succeeded. Once the main Greek force left the pass, Akichorios was free to follow Brennos’ force, but at the same time it is clear that not only had the Greeks broken their formation, so had the Galatians.
The temple at Delphi was defended by a force from Phokis, 400 hoplites from Amphissa, some available Aitolians, and the Delphians themselves, and these had sufficient warning of the attack to get into a defensive position. Akichorios’ army, probably the largest of the Galatian divisions, approached only slowly. It was harassed on its march by the main Aitolian force from Thermopylai, which had been unable to defend Kallion, but now turned about to face the larger enemy; meanwhile the Kallian attackers were being harassed by the Aitolian defensive forces. The same tactics of harassment were now employed against Akichorios, whose advance, already perhaps cautious, was clearly slowed drastically. He was also concerned to protect the baggage and the accumulated looted treasure which belonged to the whole army; this would slow him still further.
Brennos had marched his men at speed – they were not hampered by the baggage as was Akichorios’ force – and they were weary and hungry as they approached Delphi. He was advised to attack at once, while the local forces were surprised and weak, but he chose to give his men a night’s rest. The march was so badly organized that the men had to find their own supplies from the farms and villages, and these included plenty of wine, which the Galatians fell on with glee. (Later it was claimed that the Delphian oracle had suggested leaving the wine to be found, one of those cases, no doubt, where the oracle claimed retrospective credit.) As a result, not only was the night spent in carousing, but the attack in the morning was then delayed even further by the unreadiness of the army. Meanwhile about 1200 more Aitolians under Philomelos arrived to boost the defence.
The weather turned nasty, with snow, and thunder and lightning. The Greeks also recorded earthquakes, not surprising in that area, which dislodged boulders from the hillsides so that the Galatians felt they were coming under divine attack (or so it was claimed), a sentiment no doubt encouraged by the Greeks, who felt that their god was on their side. The Galatians, after their troubled and sleepless night of snow and falling rocks, were driven back, partly by a frontal assault by the hoplite phalanx, and partly by the harassing flanking fire from the hills on either side, both human and divine. The next night – their troops having been fighting or under fire for two days and a night, after their carousing night with little sleep, the Galatians panicked at the slightest sound. No doubt their fears were assisted by more Greek harassment, and by their own superstitious fears of attacking a noted sanctuary.
Greeks remembered – or imagined – visions of interference by ancient heroes, and by an epiphany of the god of the sanctuary, reported by a group of priests who charged into the midst of the army in their robes, hair flying. Apollo was, they claimed, seen to be assisting in the defence.10 This was a great encouragement to the Delphians, who could appreciate as well as anyone the value of the sanctuary, not to mention the further value of a new legend by which the gods were credited with defending themselves and their temple.
The panic in the Galatian camp led to them fighting each other in the dark, not an unknown reaction in other armies. The defenders harassed them into retreating day by day, which prevented any foraging. The news went to the Boiotians, who were still in arms after their retirement from Thermopylai, and they set about harassing the army of Akichorios, joined with some of the Athenians who was still present.11
Brennos was mortally wounded during the fighting. He had been a remarkably inventive commander, willing to change course and shift targets when blocked, and capable of inspiring his men to considerable feats of marching. None of the other Galatian commanders were in his league, and those of whom we do know generally suffered defeat. He is said to have given final orders that the only way the Galatians could escape was to kill their wounded and then march away. He himself, being wounded, committed suicide. None of this can have helped the morale of the surviving Galatians.12
It has to be said that there was a tradition in Greek histories that the sanctuary actually fell to the invaders and was looted; certainly the Galatians retarded plenty of loot, though it is clear, from contemporary evidence, the sanctuary itself was not taken.13 Given the heightened emotions involved together with the rivalries and enmities among the Greeks, especially towards the Aitolians, and the recriminations which followed, this alternative account is not surprising, and it is quite possible that the temple was untroubled, while treasures were looted, though it seems less convincing than the account given above. Similarly, the Aitolians used to claim the credit for the defence, not unjustly, but they did have a tendency to write out the contributions of others, and they were vociferous in their own claims.
Command of the Galatian forces devolved on to Akichorios, who brought the army to the Spercheios River, crossing once again. He may have assumed that at their boundary the Aitolians would cease their pursuit. If so, he was correct, but he then found that the Malians and the Thessalians, who had joined the Galatians earlier, were now hostile once more, and the harassment continued.14 The story has no room for the women and children who travelled with the invaders. They clearly did not take part in the fighting at Thermopylai and Delphi, so they were possibly left under guard in the Spercheios valley. They will have been collected during the retreat.
It was said, by the Greeks, that none of the Celts escaped,15 though this is clearly untrue. The Galatian force was in fact said to have been annihilated at least three times: at the Spercheios crossing, according to Pausanias; in Thessaly, according to Justin; and by the Dardanians in Diodoros’ account. No doubt there are more specious claims made to disguise less valiant conduct. All this is not necessarily contradictory, since there were several Galatian bands, and for them to split up for greater speed would make a certain sense.16 What is clear is that the invaders suffered very badly in their retreat.
The Thessalians are more likely to have harassed them out of Thessaly rather than to have forced them to stand and endure a do-or-die fight. They were plainly leaving, and to hinder the desperate and angry force was not sensible; it was the same reasoning which had operated to convince some Thessalians to assist the original southward movement of the invaders – to get rid of them. One source, indeed, connects this band with the formation of the later Keltic state of the Scordisci, on the Danube;17 annihilation is not believable.
The Aitolians came out of the whole affair as the heroes, not least in their own eyes. In the future they would exploit the reputation this gave them to the full. The comparison with the Persian invasion, which is so persistent a feature of Pausanias’ account, but which was an inevitable consequence of the stand made by the Greeks at Thermopylai, enabled the Aitolians to still claim credit a century later, but not wholly without complaint and opposition.18 The Aitolians used their reputation to take over the Soteria celebration at Delphi, originally instituted to celebrate the securing of the sanctuary from Persian attack, and to develop it into one giving thanks for defeating the Galatians, simultaneously therefore glorifying the Aitolians. The story of the assistance provided by the god spread rapidly, and was clearly widely believed. Within a year the Koans, who, so far as we know, were not involved directly in any of these events, resolved to make an offering to Apollo, Zeus the Saviour, and Nike (that is, Victory), recording on the inscription the god’s involvement.19
When the record is closely examined, however, it is clear that the Aitolians had really acted wholly in their own interest, as they always had, and as did every other Greek state. That is to say, the Aitolians’ policy with regard to the Galatians was to defend their own territory, and they scarcely stepped outside of their boundaries at any point in the fighting. When the Galatians retreated, the Aitolians pursued and harassed them as far as the Spercheios River, their northern boundary,20 but there they stopped; in the same way they had only begun to fight the Kelts once they had crossed the Spercheios on the way south. They were acting, of course, in the same way that all Greek states did; the joint army at Thermopylai was composed mainly of forces from central Greece whose homelands would be the next to be ravaged if the invaders had got through the pass. There were no contingents, apart from the small Achaian force from Patrai, from south of the Isthmus, but if the invaders broke through at Thermopylai, no doubt a Peloponnesian joint army would have quickly gathered at Corinth or Megara to block the Isthmus. The concept of the joint defence of all Greece was alien to all the Greek states.
The Aitolians capitalized on their success with equally successful propaganda, claiming to be the saviours of Greece, for which they certainly had an arguable case, though one that was neither indisputable nor exclusive, and of Delphi, about which there was just as much argument. The temple was adorned with Aitolian trophies of the war, statues of gods, statues of Aitolian commanders, a statue of the personification of Aitolia as a woman, armed and seated on a heap of Keltic shields – actual captured Keltic shields – in a display which was a conscious and deliberate imitation of the display of Persian shields which the Athenians had taken at Marathon.21 The message was that the Aitolians were the new Athenians, the new saviours of Greece, where the Macedonians – the inveterate enemies of the Aitolians – had failed in their historic mission of blocking the way from the north. Aitolian coins vigorously publicized these deeds for the next century and a half.22 At least one other community, Thespiai of Boiotia, was grateful enough to the Aitolians to dedicate a statue at Olympia, probably of the Aitolian commander Plaistainos son of Eurydamos, where he stood amongst kings.23 Athens put up a portrait of their own commander Kallippos beside that of Leosthenes, the heroic commander against the Macedonians in the Lamian War fifty years earlier.24 The message here is that Athens defended Greece against the barbarians wherever they came from.
After the Galatian attack, others, not directly involved, came to check on what had happened, and to hear the elaborating stories, and to sacrifice and give thanks for the shrine’s preservation, as did the envoys from Kos.25 In the process the work of the Boiotians, the Phokians, the unfortunate Achaian detachment, the Athenians, and the mercenaries of Antigonos and Antiochos, were all side-lined.
Also less than clear is the activity of the Galatians at Delphi. The implication of the stories is that the temple was spared, though the Galatians may have got into the city. Some looting evidently did take place, since some pieces from Delphi were deposited in the sanctuary at Tolosa in Gaul, perhaps by some participating Tektosages.26 The Koan inscription makes it clear that the temple, though attacked, was not seriously pillaged.
It is characteristic of the Greek accounts that once the Galatians were driven north of the Spercheios details fail us. We hear nothing of their journey through Thessaly other than that the Thessalians harassed them; nothing about their route, their numbers, or any new outrages in which, in their defeat and in a rich country, they surely indulged. The surviving Galatians certainly got through as far as Macedon as an organized warband. By this time it was early in 277, but still winter. They now had to fight again, against the Macedonians once more. Sosthenes was still in command of the army, possibly now without any king to hamper him, though it is certain that some of the deposed kings were still around.
Sosthenes, therefore, had to fight the retreating survivors of the invaders once again. Quite likely, once he understood that they had no intention of staying, he would be quite as willing to let them leave as the commanders to the south. But not all of them left, and some bands hung around and had to be rooted out.
The retreating force, probably still commanded by Akichorios, broke up when in Macedon, a factor which tends to suggest that they were not then under any sort of attack. Some of them went on northwards to become, as Justin says, the founders of the Scordisci state.27 A second group, or rather two groups travelling together, commanded by Leonnorios and Loutarios, separated from the home going group, and turned eastwards. They moved along the Thracian coast, which took them out of the reach of the Macedonians, as was perhaps their initial intention. By the middle of 277 they were in the Thracian Chersonese, possibly having captured and plundered the city of Lysimacheia on the way.28 (Their activities from there on are discussed in chapter 5.)
At some time in this period, for which the sources are absent or excessively fragmentary, Sosthenes died, or was killed, perhaps in June of 277. If any of the deposed kings made any attempt to re-seize power after he was gone they were unsuccessful, and no such attempt is recorded. But one of the events in this period was an odd little naval war which was waged between Antiochos I and Antigonos Gonatas.29 Antigonos, probably in pursuit of this war, brought his army to the Chersonese, and there he encountered a band of Galatians, whom he enticed into a trap and then massacred.30
Antigonos then played his masterstroke by enlisting Galatians into his forces as (relatively cheap) mercenaries. This rescued numbers of Galatians from probable early death at Greek or Macedonian hands (or Antigonos’), removed them from marauding in Greece and Macedon, and provided Antigonos himself with a useful and easily expendable force of soldiers. It was with this mercenary army that he succeeded in establishing control over Macedon at some time during 277 after Sosthenes’ death.
Antigonos made careful use of his Greek mercenaries and the enlisted Galatians, and succeeded in driving out the invaders; he also succeeded in driving out his competitors.31 He had done most of this by late 277, but it took him another ten months to gain control of Kassandreia, which had been seized first by Eurydike, the former wife of Ptolemy I and the mother of Keraunos, but she was then succeeded, perhaps by means of a coup d’état, by a tyrant, Apollodoros, who held control of the city for the next ten months, using increasingly-extreme social and political policies to maintain his control.
Two of the rejected kings, Ptolemy son of Lysimachos and Antipater son of Philip, fled for refuge to Egypt, though when this removal took place – whether during the post-Galatian anarchy which seems to have followed Sosthenes’ death, or in the face of Antigonos’ success – is not known. Ptolemy II gave them shelter, no doubt regarding them as useful cards which he might play in the continuing international competition. They turned out, as might have been expected from their origins, very differently useful. Ptolemy son of Lysimachos (the son of Arsinoe II, who became the new wife of Ptolemy II, her brother, a factor which clearly affected his fate) was soon placed in a little principality of his own at Telmessos in Lykia.32 This planted a son of Lysimachos on the borders of Seleukos’ conquest in Asia Minor, now under Antiochos I, as a possible pretender there.
Antipater’s lack of ambition returned once he was safe in Egypt. He almost vanished from view. He is mentioned in a single source about twenty years after his flight from Macedon. He was living quietly in Egypt, and had developed, and was constantly indulging, a passion for playing dice.33
Both of these men were obviously threats to Antiochos I and Antigonos when they were in the hands of Ptolemy II. A son of Lysimachos planted on the border of his father’s former kingdom could not be seen as anything other than a threat. Both men still had claims on the kingship of Macedon, even though they had been rejected by the Macedonians – but stranger things than the restoration of one of them had happened – such as their elevation in the first place. That these threats did not lead to any serious activity aimed at overthrowing the kings does not lessen their intermittent potency. They could clearly be activated by Ptolemy II whenever he wished.
But Antigonos in Macedon had other problems than these distant failed kings. He had gained control of the Macedonian kingdom by the end of 277, and of the city of Kassandreia during 276. To this he added the various cities in Greece which he had inherited from his father. The removal of his rivals included making peace with Antiochos, as a result of which Antigonos married Antiochos’ sister Phila. This was a link with the Seleukid kingdom which proved to be both useful and permanent. There was one more claimant to Macedon he had to face, however. Pyrrhos returned from Italy and Sicily in 275 and next year, restless as ever, he invaded Macedon. The old attraction between him and the Macedonian soldiers worked once more, though others might have seen in him a revival of the spirit of Ptolemy Keraunos. Antigonos’ Macedonian soldiers changed sides in the battle (though his Galatian mercenaries fought for him to the death). Antigonos was beaten in a fight and was reduced to controlling only the city of Thessaloniki.
And yet Pyrrhos, as the Macedonians should have known by now, was a hopeless king, anywhere but his ancestral Epeirote kingdom. His Galatian mercenaries rifled some of the royal tombs at Aigai, and he made no apology, nor did he punish them. He never finished off his conquest of Macedon – the final details were apparently too tedious for his attention – but instead he went off to fight another war in Greece, leaving Antigonos to intrigue against him from his base at Thessaloniki.34 In that Greek campaign he was killed when an old woman threw a roof tile at him as he tried to enter the city of Argos on an elephant which got stuck in the city gate, a suitably ignominious death for a careless king; his elimination allowed everyone to breathe a heartfelt sigh of relief.35
Antigonos resumed his kingship of Macedon once more. And this time he held on to it. Further, he ruled for another thirty years, at the end of which he had successfully planted his dynasty solidly in power in the country. This was one of the main political results of the Galatian invasions, to bring Macedon back from its fragmentation and weakness and disputed kingship into a condition where it was once again one of the Great Powers of the Macedonian world.
In Greece, on the other hand, the divisions of the region between the city states was confirmed yet again, even emphasized, by the defeat of the invaders. The Macedonians had long memories of barbarian invasions from the north, and when a capable king ruled they could accept him; heredity was perhaps less important there in the end than respecting their customs and traditions, and both were subordinated to a capability of ruling and commanding; the litany of rejected kings from Demetrios I to Pyrrhos is a clear indication of Macedonian preferences. The Galatian experience had been traumatic, probably the worst barbarian invasion Macedon had ever endured, and it could be put down, possibly, to the weakness of the ruling kings. So when a working, sensible, and largely peaceable king came along, all his competitors were swiftly discarded.
In Greece, the barbarian threat had been less than dire, and had affected only a few states. The invaders were defeated by the assembled armies of the Greek cities, so that those cities could congratulate themselves that their political system had worked. They could preen themselves on being able to combine against such a threat when it was necessary, comparing their response to the Galatian invasions with that to the Persian attacks two centuries before, even though the combination in both cases had been fractious, partial, and had broken up all too quickly. In other words, the threat had not been sufficient or prolonged enough to jolt the cities out of their political complacency, and they reverted to their state of division for another century and a half – until an even more brutal conqueror came along.
The Greek winners were clearly the Aitolians, whose league had held together in the crisis, and whose people had demonstrated a powerful unity and determination to drive out the invaders. But they crowed about their success too loudly; they had been unpopular before the Galatian invasions, and they were disliked after it; nevertheless, for the next three generations they were the most powerful Greek state. This was, along with the recovery of Macedon under Antigonos, the single greatest result of the Galatian invasion in Greece.