Chapter 5
The Galatians who moved into Thrace in 278/277 were divided into several groups. Those survivors of the Greek and Macedonian campaigns who were commanded by Leonnorios and Loutarios were accompanied by their women and children. Of the suggested ‘20,000’ people who comprised this band, probably half of these were dependents, which meant that the whole group moved fairly slowly.1 It also suggests that they had all moved as a distinct group through Macedon and into Greece, alongside, or within, Brennos’ and Akichorios’ larger group, though obviously the warriors participated in the raiding and the battles.
There is no indication in the sources for this part of the history of the expedition that the women and children were present in the fighting at Thermopylai and Delphi, so it is likely that they had been left somewhere under guard and protection, perhaps north of the Spercheios River, while the fighting was going on. On the retreat through Greece they were evidently still a distinct group, or perhaps two groups under the two leaders, possibly annexing some men from other groups to replace any casualties – some of the women will have become widows during the fighting, and new husbands will have been valued. Their decision to separate from the main force and head into Thrace was no doubt a collective one, made after discussion, and possibly based on disgust at the failed leadership of the Greek expedition.
The decision to retreat, after their defeats at Delphi and Thermopylai, probably promoted or encouraged, the separation of the Leonnorios/ Loutarios group from the main body; the main group aimed to return to the Banat area, the two dissident groups were looking for a new homeland. By moving as a unit, families and all, it is evident that the Leonnorios/ Loutarios warbands had set out on the march into Macedon and Greece from the start with the intention of seizing that new homeland for themselves. They had failed in Greece, but their move into Thrace does imply an intention to continue that search.
It is not clear whether the warband under Kommontorios which formed the new kingdom of Tylis was composed of families or just of warriors, though some deductions can be made. The fact that they came directly from the Banat area into Thrace, and straight away established themselves there as the kingdom of Tylis would suggest that they were a migratory rather than simply a military group. In Thrace, therefore, when these movements had taken place, the Galatians were a set of separate forces which were quite distinct from the main body, which had returned to the Banat. Their intentions to find new homelands, particularly in Thrace, meant that they were therefore not so easy to shift, once they had chosen that new home. The main body, once it had been defeated at Delphi and Thermopylai, had immediately turned back and returned home, carrying whatever loot the men had collected, determinedly harassed by Thessalians, Macedonians, and Dardanians; the groups which split off had already cut their links with their original homeland, and were intent on conquest.
By moving into Thrace, both the Leonnorios/Loutarios and the Kommontorios groups found themselves in a cul-de-sac. They were not the only Galatian groups in the area. There was also the group which in 277 Antigonos defeated and massacred in the Chersonese; and there was the Tektosages, which had not yet linked up with the Leonnorios/ Loutarios group; also there was the probably fairly small groups which Antigonos mopped up by recruiting them into his new mercenary army. Once he had done that he quickly gained control of Macedon, and this therefore blocked any retreat by the groups in Thrace back into Macedon. Kommontorios’ group swiftly became established in its corner of Thrace, thereby excluding others. Behind them was Macedon, damaged but angry, and by no means finished – Sosthenes was in command until 277, then Antigonos soon after. Before them were the Straits – the Bosporos, the Propontis, the Hellespont – which were too wide to be crossed without the use of at least some ships or boats, and perhaps seamen as well. There were walled cities along the Thracian coast which they had passed on their migration, and were now part of Antigonos’ kingdom, and which in most cases they could not capture, and there were fully alert governments on the Asian side, who were likely to block any crossing.
The Galatians in Thrace menaced the cities on the coast, ravaged Byzantion’s territory, and managed to capture and loot Lysimacheia, which may have been recently damaged by an earthquake, and may also have been partly evacuated for this reason. The several small cities in the Chersonese are not mentioned in the only source on this episode – Livy writing nearly three centuries later – but one would suppose that most of those cities suffered, either seeing their lands ravaged, or finding that they were captured, or both; possibly they were among those whom Livy says ‘sought peace’ from the invaders, and paid tribute.
The Galatians occupied the Chersonese, once Antigonos had massacred his victims and moved on. Perhaps they could have settled there, but it was a narrow land, and the wealthy and extensive territory of Asia Minor was visible across the straits, and this attracted them even more. They sent envoys to negotiate for a crossing, contacting Antipatros, the Seleukid governor of the region, whom Livy called ‘the prefect of the coast’ – he was probably the governor of Hellespontine Phrygia. He refused them leave to cross, not surprisingly.
Livy now claims that the two Galatian leaders disagreed as to their next move – he calls it a ‘revolt’ – or maybe they decided to separate to try two different ways of crossing the water; since later they joined up again, whatever had been the supposed disagreement, it was not permanent; more likely it was a later interpretation from their brief separation. It looks more like a deliberate attempt to try several ways of crossing, so that if one group got across the other could follow. The separation may also be due to logistical reasons. If they had been in the Chersonese for some time, they will have largely eaten up the local supplies; when Leonnorios’ group went off, their first priority was to ‘ravage’ – that is, gather or steal supplies of food – in the land they now occupied. Leonnorios took his force back towards Byzantion, a narrow crossing, while Loutarios attempted again to negotiate a passage with Antipatros, who was based at that moment in the Troad. This may in fact have been a ploy to keep Antipatros pinned down and allow Leonnorios’ force to try crossing by another route.
The presence of the Galatian bands was a major burden for the people in Thrace. The settlement of Kommontorios’ people in Thrace as the Tylis kingdom menaced the cities of the Pontic coast, at least until they came to an agreement with their new neighbour. Kommontorios eventually, but probably not until Leonnorios’ force had moved on, instituted the more or less regular blackmail of Byzantion, beginning with a demand for 3000 pieces of gold – possibly an annual payment. Leonnorios’ force sat in the city’s territory, consuming supplies, and looting anything of value the men could find; the presence of Loutarios’ band in the Chersonese was even more damaging to the cities there. The satrap Antipatros apparently continued resolutely firm in his refusal of passage across the Hellespont – clearly understanding how the Galatians would behave if allowed across – but at the Bosporos matters were different.
The political condition of Asia Minor, the land the Galatians were hoping to enter, was almost as confused and divided as the Thrace they were already inhabiting – temporarily, they hoped. The overall authority was the Seleukid king, Antiochos I, the son of the conqueror Seleukos I. Antiochos was an experienced ruler and commander, having been posted to the eastern provinces by his father to rule Baktria well over ten years before his father’s murder. It had taken him some time to arrive in the west after his father’s death, and once arrived he had had to cope with a series of problems. It had been his intention, as it has been that of his father, to cross into Europe and claim the kingship of Macedon, but the problems of Asia had delayed him. These had involved him in a brief war with Ptolemy Keraunos, and in another brief war with Antigonos Gonatas, both of whom were kings of Macedon in occupation, or claiming that position – Antiochos’ own claim was based on his father’s defeat of Lysimachos, king of Macedon and of Asia Minor. None of these three men claiming the post had been in occupation when they made their claims, and the one who succeeded in taking up the kingship, Ptolemy Keraunos, lasted only a year and a half.
Antiochos had tackled the main problem he faced – control of Asia Minor – with care, clearly anxious not to provoke local opposition. The country had been under Lysimachos’ rule for twenty years, however, and, though Lysimachos had not been liked towards the end, that was not necessarily a reason to welcome yet another king. Antiochos’ centre of government for the whole region was Sardis, the old Lydian and Persian capital. From there he faced a string of old Greek cities along the Aegean coast, many of them rich, famous, and vulnerable, but all of them autonomous to varying degrees. In the town of Pergamon, a little to the north and inland, Lysimachos’ local treasurer, Philetairos, guarded his charge in a well-fortified castle. He had apparently accompanied Seleukos into Europe; after the king’s murder he had secured Seleukos’ body, performed the expected funeral rites, and then had handed the ashes on to Antiochos. This was sufficient to guarantee Philetairos his own, and Pergamon’s, autonomy, but he also continued to hold and guard his treasure.2
The north coast of Asia Minor was also lined by a number of autonomous polities, a mixture of Greek cities and native kingships and lordships. These had all been menaced by the clear determination of Seleukos while he lived to impose his authority on them, and in response they had organized themselves into an alliance, which modern historians call the Northern League: Byzantion and Kalchedon, facing each other on opposite sides of the Bosporos, the king of Bithynia, the city of Herakleia Pontike, which had recently established its control over several nearby smaller cities, and whose navy was one of the main strengths of the alliance. The king of Pontos was loosely attached to the league, as was for a time Antigonos Gonatas.3 The league had successfully maintained the independence of its members against Seleukos and then against Antiochos, who was just as determined in his pursuit of them as his father, but it had begun to break up by the time the Galatians arrived in Thrace. Byzantion evidently received no help against Kommontorios or Leonnorios from its allies, and meanwhile the Bithynian state was rent by a dynastic dispute, with two brothers claiming the kingship, and dividing the country between them. This had provided Antiochos with the opportunity to intervene and, he hoped, to establish his control, or at least his supremacy, on one of the Bithynian contenders, by allying with him and pushing out the other. But this was an idea which could occur to others.
The Northern War had been Antiochos’ immediate concern,4 but now that the Galatian bands had arrived at the Straits they provided an additional complication to an already complex matter. The Straits both separated and linked the two crises, and inevitably the two coalesced. When he arrived, Leonnorios quickly became fully acquainted with the political situation in the area, if he was not already: across the Straits was Bithynia, a fractured kingdom under threat. It was either a perfect prey, or a Trojan Horse for entry into Asia.
Leonnorios and his band were hired by the Bithynian in occupation, Nikomedes, to squash his enemy brother, Zipoetas. This was agreed in a treaty which Leonnorios made with the whole Northern League. Possibly the league thought it was hiring a huge mercenary band, but Nikomedes was probably more alert to what the Galatians intended. At any rate, he not only used them to remove his brother, but to pursue his war with Antiochos. Moving them to Asia would therefore relieve Byzantion of the burden of the Galatian presence, and Bithynia of the threat of both Zipoetas and Antiochos I, at least for the moment. At the Hellespont, Loutarios’ negotiations with Antipatros (Antiochos’ governor) continued to meet with no success. Antipatros then dispatched men across to investigate the Galatians. They were sent ‘to spy, under cover of being an embassy’, Livy explains. They arrived in two triremes and three smaller vessels, which Loutarios’ men seized, presumably having dealt with the agents first. For the Galatians, this procedure was even better than crossing by treaty, for they were not restricted by any conditions. Loutarios got his whole force across in ‘a few days’.5
The two groups constituted themselves into two traditional Keltic tribes. When this occurred is not clear, though the beginning of the march against Macedon and Greece would seem to be the most likely time, for they operated from the time of the defeat at Delphi as distinct units. The Leonnorios group had the name Tolistobogii, and the Loutarios group were the Trokmoi. The origin of the names is unknown, but they may have been the names of the senior constituent elements of each of the tribes. It is clear from later details that each tribe consisted of several sections, each with their own names, and these remained in existence and in use within the larger grouping. The dangers involved in their travels, their fighting, and their search for a homeland are quite sufficient to account for their welding into clear political units, which existed for the next six centuries at least. The names, however, are only first recorded with regard to their campaigns in Asia after the elimination of Zipoetas.
Byzantion had suffered a severe ravaging of its territory, though more precision is not available. The city had asked for help from its allies, and had loyally opposed the Galatians’ attempts to cross into Asia, which its allies did not want, at first. But when Nikomedes of Bithynia intervened, he and Byzantion saw an opportunity both to gain an ally against the brother and a neat way to get rid of the city’s unwanted visitors, and a useful force to be used against Antiochos. It is quite possible that the Byzantines were the intermediaries in the negotiations, possibly even the instigators. The result was a treaty between Nikomedes and his allies (Byzantion, Kalchedon, Tios, Herakleia, and Kieros, and ‘a few other tribal lands’) on the one hand, and ‘the barbarians’ on the other. They were allies, not subjects or hirelings, whatever the Greeks might think to themselves.6
This treaty raises a wider point about the general situation. The Galatians are regularly described as barbarians in the Greek (and Roman) sources, and their behaviour in fighting is usually described as savage and cruel, though it was perhaps only a little worse than that of the Greeks themselves – who regularly destroyed cities, massacred defeated enemies, and enslaved survivors. In their diplomacy the Galatians generally conformed carefully to the accepted norms of the time and place.7 In particular, a treaty between monarchies was made to last for the lifetimes of the contracting parties, by which it continued in existence until one of the parties died; alternatively a time limit, usually a number of years, could be included, and this latter was the preferred system for Republican states, whose magistrates usually served for only one year;8 another alternative would be to contract for a particular occasion or task – such as delivering Nikomedes from the threat of his brother. To this system the Galatians clearly conformed: they had made an alliance with Nikomedes, and they respected it until the king died in c.255. It appears that he specified that the treaty must include a clause that the Galatians would be ‘well-disposed to Nikomedes and his descendants’. This was not anything more, perhaps, than a hope, but the Galatians did assist one side in another Bithynian dynastic conflict after Nikomedes died, and otherwise kept the peace with the Bithynian kings until 230.
Nikomedes had been in a very difficult situation. He had been allied to both the Northern league and Antigonos Gonatas against the attempt by Antiochos I to re-establish Seleukid control over all the countries along the northern Asia Minor coast, but when Antigonos and Antiochos made peace (in 279 or 278) he was faced by the civil war with his brother, and so became extremely vulnerable, for that peace signalled the imminent dissolution of the league. Antiochos clearly now had the new capability to ally with Zipoetas and therefore drive out Nikomedes, or drive out both of them. Leonnorios and his warband were already enemies of Antiochos, who was denying them passage; so Nikomedes’ alliance with the Galatians was a normal matter of the alliance of two powers facing the same enemy. By bringing them over the Bosporos, Nikomedes’ ally Byzantion was relieved of their attentions, and by carefully listing the allies of Bithynia in the treaty, they also were being protected from Galatian attack, and Nikomedes was ensuring the continued existence of the Northern League. This was all within the normal methods of Hellenistic diplomacy and political behaviour.
The two Galatian forces, who actually got across into Asia at more or less the same time, joined together again to conduct the war for Nikomedes’ kingdom, by eliminating Zipoetas, and were then encouraged by Nikomedes to continue the wider war by fighting his (and their) other enemy Antiochos – which would also remove the potentially dangerous Galatians from the Bithynian kingdom in the same way that the original agreement moved them away from Byzantion. True to their alliance with the Northern League, the whole joint warband, which at about this time had been joined by a third Galatian tribe, the Tektosages, which had been transported across the Strait in their wake, turned south to begin the looting of the rest of Asia Minor, Antiochos’ territory. Nikomedes was at war with Antiochos; sending the Galatians south into the king’s country was obviously a sensible military measure, and the worthwhile use of a willing ally. Moreover, it worked, and Bithynia’s independence was assured from then on.9
No continuous account can be written of the subsequent events, though stories were later told which indicate that many of the cities of the western coast were threatened at one time or another; and yet there is a clear pattern involved. The three tribes operated to a clear plan in their campaign. In war they specialized in surprise attacks and fast movement, and they stayed nowhere for very long. They must have had centres from which they operated, probably fortified camps (perhaps like those known in the Ukraine), but none are specifically recorded. Their accumulated loot was no doubt substantial; we do not know what they did with it beyond holding on to it, and still held it a century later.10 Some of it was no doubt sold, or exchanged for provisions, and it is known that they were accompanied, or followed, by numbers of merchants who would be happy to overcharge them. They could be defied from behind strong walls, if the will of the defenders was firm enough. Few, if any, Asian walled cities seem to have been physically captured, but any city they approached had its lands ravaged, at the least, and blackmail was paid by some. Rural inhabitants clearly suffered the most, and being outside the city when the Galatians arrived was to risk death, kidnapping, and enslavement. No doubt slave traders were part of the merchant group following them around.
It is reported in Livy that once the Galatians moved away from Bithynia they were divided, or divided themselves, into three ‘tribes’, the Trokmoi, the Tolistobogii, and the Tektosages, though this division had probably existed from much earlier.11 In addition, they are said at one point to have had seventeen chiefs, who may or may not have included the original commanders Leonnorios and Loutarios and whoever was the leader of the third group.12 The large number of chiefs implies that each of these three main tribes was composed of several sub-sections, each under its own chief. The numbers of Galatians is put by Livy at 20,000, of whom only half were ‘armed’ – that is, were warriors; he is referring at this point to the two groups which crossed first under Leonnorios and Loutarios, probably the Tolistobogii and the Trokmoi; the third group is perhaps also counted as ‘10,000’, a vague figure which really just means ‘a lot’. This is usually seen as too small for their intended task, and some would increase the total to up to 50,000 people, to include dependents, assuming that the ‘20,000’ were fighters, though Livy is quite specific that only half were warriors.13 None of these numbers, ancient or modern, can be taken as anywhere near accurate, all are mere estimates. Each of the three divisions, therefore, comprised in the region of a few thousand warriors, though we do not know how precisely they were divided or constituted. Whatever the precise numbers, this was a relatively small force, and once divided, as it evidently was almost as soon as they began to campaign, the campaigning units were even smaller; this needs to be kept in mind when we examine their campaigns.
Each of the three tribes was a distinct political unit and each of them was allotted, literally by lot, a part of the Asian territory as the area which it was to attack – the Trokmoi had the Hellespontine lands, that is, probably the Seleukid province of Hellespontine Phrygia, from the Bithynian border to the Troad; the Tolistobogii took ‘Aiolis and Ionia’ as their region, which was probably the satrapy of Lydia; the Tektosages are said to have had the Asian interior as their prey, but this is an extremely vague phrase in the circumstances, and probably results from a later circumstance; the earliest allocation was probably the southern area of Karia. This would imply that each of these tribes had a base somewhere in their raiding territory, though no such base has ever been located. If the allocated areas reflected the relative strengths of the three tribes, the Tektosages were the smallest, while the other two were roughly equal in size.
These political divisions might have allowed us to attribute to each tribe the raiding activities in the next year or so, but in fact the records of their activities tend to favour the territory of the Tolistobogii in ‘Aiolis and Ionia’. The rich cities of the Aegean coast were their prey, though not one is recorded as having been captured.14
Kyzikos was the first Asian victim, and had its lands ravaged, presumably by the Trokmoi, who held the northern franchise. It was the first city they came to after leaving Bithynia, though those in the Troad may have been attacked by the Trokmoi after they crossed the Hellespont; at that point, however, it was rather more urgent that they join their fellows in the north. The evidence from Kyzikos is in a carved relief from the city showing Herakles, to whom the relief is dedicated, fighting a Galatian warrior, in which Herakles is using his club to good effect. It was a dedication by the officials of the city to the helpful Herakles, and evidently commemorated an episode in which the city was victorious over the Galatian attackers.
Kyzikos had its own diplomatic connections, independent of the Northern League, of which it was not a member – which is why, no doubt, it was attacked. Its closest connection was with Philetairos of Pergamon, and through him with King Antiochos. Both Philetairos and Kyzikos were therefore allies, or clients, of Antiochos, and Philetairos used the wealth under his control to establish political connections – for himself, particularly. Every year from 280 to 275 he gave something to Kyzikos, and ‘during the war against the Galatians’ he supplied the city with barley and wheat. No doubt the lands of the city had been damaged in the war, and the food will have supplied the resulting deficiency; the city itself was not captured, though its soldiers fought the attackers, and the Herakles inscription was therefore a self-celebration by the city.15
The reference to ‘the war’ in the description of Philetairos’ gift appears to date from 276/275, by which time the Galatians had begun their march into Asia, having dealt with Zipoetas, which appears to have taken over a year to accomplish. In the Troad, the city of Ilion was briefly occupied, though by whom is unclear. It could have been by Loutarios’ warband who were in this area soon after crossing the Hellespont, when they were evidently looking for a place in which to defend themselves, perhaps while all of them were ferried across the Hellespont, and that city would be the closest to where they had landed. The place was regarded as untenable because it was unwalled, and was quickly abandoned. The alternative is that it was seized by the Trokmoi after they had dealt with Kyzikos.
This brief seizure of Ilion is a detail which rather suggests that this particular Galatian group, whichever it was, might have been looking for a new home as soon as they had crossed the Hellespont, or as soon as they had finished with the work in Bithynia. The difficulty is that this episode may instead refer to a later immigrant Galatian group, the Aigosages, who crossed in the same way decades later. The city had recently, under Lysimachos, been subjected to a forced synoecism, uniting it with a set of small and damaged cities nearby into the new city of Alexandria Troas. Not all of these victims, as they evidently saw themselves, were willing to accept this change in their status, though this might explain the ‘unwalled’ nature of the site. The place was reoccupied at some point, and later the Romans found it to be a ‘village-city’, implying a certain lack of fortification still in the 190s. Its unwalled state obviously made it vulnerable to the Galatians – any Galatians – when the band occupied it briefly and no doubt looted and damaged it; equally its unfortified state rendered if fairly useless for them as well.16
The information about the Galatians’ attacks on individual cities in Asia Minor is only available in sources connected with the cities themselves, as with Kyzikos and Ilion, already discussed. There is no overall account of the campaigns such as is available for the campaigns in the European lands. The sources are, indeed, largely in the form of inscriptions, and are often personal, relaying individuals’ experiences or activities, usually in the form of gratitude to a god. The events therefore have to be reconstructed from individual anecdotes, with the obvious attendant gaps and omissions and distortions. There were undoubtedly other places which were attacked of which we have no record, and any interpretation based on the facts we have now is tentative.
The division of the Asia Minor coastal area into raiding areas, one for each tribe, presupposes a considerable degree of advance knowledge of Asia and its geography amongst the Galatians from the start. This follows on from the similar information about Greek conditions shown by the expedition under Brennos. But while Greece may have been familiar to some of the participants from personal visits, or from mercenary sources – there had been Gauls in Sparta in the 370s17 and in Syracuse earlier, and there had been a century of campaigning up and down the length of Italy – there is no obvious situation in which Galatians can have acquired personal knowledge of conditions in Asia. Visits by individuals are quite possible, of course, even likely, and during their stay in Bithynia no doubt plenty of information about the location of the cities and the wealthy temples was available, above all for Nikomedes and his court, who were no doubt quite happy to see the Seleukid kingdom suffer. The busier the Seleukid King Antiochos was kept by the raiders, the safer King Nikomedes in Bithynia would be. It must also be possible that secondhand information about Asia had reached the Gauls in Gaul itself, filtered through Massalia.
Massalia was a Greek colonial city in Gaul, founded from Phokaia in Asia three centuries earlier.18 We have two clear cases where Asian Greeks automatically saw Massalia as the place to go in order to contact particular Gauls.19 One of the three Galatian ‘tribes’, the Tektosages, had a ‘branch’ in south-western Gaul, and it was to their shrine at Tolosa that some offerings from the Delphian loot were sent.20 A man whose wife had been carried off by a Gaul, went to Massalia in a quest to recover her. The Gauls of southern Gaul clearly could find out information about Asian Greeks without difficulty, just as Asian Greeks clearly knew plenty about southern Gaul.
It will not do to consider the Galatians to be mere ignorant ‘barbarians’. Even in Asia they had contact with Gaul itself, overland by way of their Balkan homeland and through the lands of the Danubian Gauls, and they were evidently fully conscious of their western origins, both recent and more distant.
And, once across the Straits and in Asia, it would hardly be difficult to locate the most promising targets. The Bithynians, no doubt as concerned to be rid of their uncomfortable guests as the Byzantines had been, could probably suggest some targets – it is significant that Kyzikos, not part of the Northern league, was an early victim – as could the merchants who followed them to cash in on their loot.21 It is therefore no surprise that one of the first targets of the Tektosages, who held the southern franchise, was the temple of Apollo at Didyma.22 This had been for the previous thirty years one of the primary targets of dedications and presents by the Seleukid kings, even, or especially while it was under their enemy Lysimachos. Out of his loot from his Indian expedition, Seleukos I, for example, had given great quantities of spices and incense, and gold and silver vessels to the temples, and he had been financing the reconstruction of the temples as well.23 (He had, of course, done this with the intention of establishing a position of political influence within Lysimachos’ lands, just as Philetairos was doing in Antiochos I’s lands, at Kyzikos, for example.)
The temple at Didyma was thus extremely wealthy. It was also, since 281 and Seleukos I’s victory over Lysimachos, within Seleukid territory, and to the Bithynians and their Galatian allies this was enemy territory. A barbarian raid on one of the primary sanctuaries of the Seleukid enemy would inevitably attract the king’s attention, and would significantly damage his reputation, especially as the temple was by no means so easy to defend as Delphi – and so he could be blamed for neglecting it. For Galatians who had been defeated in the Delphi raid, the chance to get revenge on the god who was credited with the victory there – Apollo in both places – would be sweet. The raid on Didyma seems to have been just about the first one mounted in this Karian region, and one may suspect the Bithynians’ hand was involved in directing the Galatians towards it.
Like Ilion, Didyma was unprotected by walls or by soldiers. All but a few items – two in the treasury of Apollo’s temple, half a dozen in Artemis’ temple – were taken. The priests were bureaucratic to a degree, carefully recording lists of the gifts they had received, and then making new lists of the fragments and broken items that were left after the raid, no doubt determined to impress on donors their new poverty and misfortune. The items removed clearly included those presented by Seleukos in 288, which amounted to 3200 drachmae of gold, and over 9300 drachmae of silver, unless it had been spent or given away – and this was only one king’s offering on one single occasion.24
In the same region was Miletos. The Milesians spent a good deal of their reserves during the next two centuries aiming to complete the building of the Didyma temple (though it never was completed).25 The city itself suffered much less from the Galatians’ attentions, since it was both walled and defended. But a group of women celebrating the Thesmophoria festival outside the walls were captured; three girls were so shocked by their treatment that they committed suicide; most of the women were ransomed.26 One of the women so captivated her captor that he carried her off to Gaul, perhaps not unwillingly on her part. Her (Greek) husband followed by sea through Italy to Massalia to recover her; the end of the story is not clear, but if Kavaros (the captor) got to his own homeland in Gaul – presumably the country of the Tektosages – it is unlikely the husband will have succeeded in recovering his wife. The central point of the story from the point of view of Miletos was that it was necessary to keep the guard alert and the city walls in full repair. No doubt later Thesmophoria celebrations either took place inside the city, or, if outside, under guard. From our point of view one of the main lessons is that it is evidence of continuing connections between the invaders of Asia and the Tektosages in far-off Gaul, and that the Galatians’ warlike powers were limited to open cities.
Miletos and Didyma, south of ‘Aiolis and Ionia’, were presumably also the targets of the Tektosages, an assumption partly encouraged by the story of Kavaros and his captive in southern Gaul. Also within their Asian franchise was Priene, which was close to Miletos. There the raiders met more resistance, more active than that at Miletos and more effective, but also somewhat costly. The evidence is a long inscription honouring a man called Sotas son of Lykos who organized the defence. The city was perhaps already on the alert. The raiders arrived in March (276) and made contact – at whose initiative is not known – with the Pedieis, a disaffected group who lived as serfs in the city’s territory. They joined the invaders in attacking the city. If the Pedieis contacted the Galatians, this may have been the reason for the attack (and for the apparent foreknowledge of the attack within the city), with the serfs guiding the Galatians to what was thought to be a soft target; if the contact was at the Galatians’ initiative, this would argue a most active intelligence gathering system by the raiders.
Priene, under Sotas’ persuasions, resisted. It was not just a matter of facing a looting rampage by the Galatians, but also of fighting a rebellion by the Pedieis, who, as a subject peasantry, were clearly all too willing to turn the tables on their masters; the invasion therefore would become a social revolution, which in the ancient world normally meant a massacre of the losers. It cannot have taken much to persuade the Prienians to fight back under such circumstances. It was also a combination of a resentful rebellious peasantry with the greedy invaders which may explain the unusual savagery of the fighting: prisoners captured in the countryside suffered ‘outrages’, Greeks caught out in the country were killed, the country temples were looted and defiled, and as they withdrew, the farms and buildings were burnt. (It may therefore be assumed that the Pedieis who joined the raiders withdrew with them.) The details may seem particularly savage, but they were no worse than the Greeks inflicted on each other.
The citizen militia, horse and foot, were mobilized, apparently at Sotas’ initiative, and marched out to confront the raiders. This appears to have been sufficient to drive them away, but they were not pursued too closely – they clearly had plenty of time for their killings and destructions as they withdrew. The fighting went on for some time with the militia attempting to secure the country buildings and to rescue captives. Sotas arranged that strong points in the countryside were occupied, where forces would be available to interrupt any raiders, thus implying that the raiding went on even after the main force withdrew, presumably mainly by the unreconciled Pedieis; the inhabitants of the countryside were brought into the city for their safety (or to stop more Pedieis getting away).
The Prienian resistance was only partly effective. It would seem that considerable numbers of captives were removed – or in the case of the Pedieis, escaped – and perhaps many more were killed; singling out Greeks for killing was presumably the work of the Pedieis – the Galatians were more prone to hold captives for ransom, or sell them into slavery (a Greek custom also, of course). Property damage was evidently extensive. The country temples and shrines were particular targets, partly because they held treasures, or were assumed to, but probably also because to the Pedieis they were the symbols of their subjection. If, as is theorized, the Pedieis were the descendants of the original inhabitants of the land, conquered and subdued by the Prienian citizens, the Greek gods would not be their gods.27
These three places, Didyma, Miletos, Priene, are geographically close together: Priene is only fifteen kilometres from Miletos, which in turn is only twenty kilometres from Didyma. It is thus highly probable that all three were subjected to raids by the same group of attackers, and that seems to mean the Tektosages. Going north from Priene, the first place known to have been attacked is Ephesos, though the only indication is that a woman taken captive there later committed suicide; the story is probably fictionalized, but it certainly fits the pattern of the time; the city was not even attacked, it seems.28 A more firm and detailed account of a Galatian event is from Erythrai, which is on the end of a long peninsula, where the advance of the attackers would seem to have been signalled well in advance. The city had prepared by placing a prominent and wealthy citizen, Polykritos, in charge of the defence, supported by the elected generals of the year. Their preparations included getting arms, no doubt embodying the citizen army, and collecting money, perhaps by a special tax. Polykritos himself went out to meet the approaching Galatians, who were commanded by Leonnorios (which is our best evidence that his command was of the Tolistobogii). Negotiations ensued. Polykritos promised to pay tribute, and the Galatians took some hostages to guarantee payment. Polykritos collected the money, delivered it, and recovered the hostages.29
This sequence of events at Erythrai demonstrates once again that the Galatians did not necessarily indulge in wanton destruction and barbarity. This they resorted to with the aim of inducing their victim to negotiate and pay either blackmail or ransom, a normal recognized method of warfare. They could be bought off and were fully capable of entering into peaceable negotiations, and of making agreements which they would then keep. It is customary to decry these procedures as the payment of ‘Danegeld’, which in English history is a pejorative term which implies the likelihood that the raiders would soon return and make more demands. This was certainly the case at Byzantion, where the kingdom of Tylis imposed regular and increasing payments on the city, and it is evidently what Ptolemy Keraunos thought would happen if he succumbed to Bolgios’ demands. But the Galatians in Asia were in search of two things: wealth and a new homeland, and while collecting wealth was an immediate interest, the search for a new homeland was perhaps their real priority. There was, they must have soon realized, very little possibility of acquiring the latter in the western parts of Asia Minor, packed solid as it already was with cities, most of whom were walled and bristling with weapons – none of the cities so far mentioned was captured, except unwalled Ilion. The Erythraians may have paid the Galatians to go away, but they did so on the basis of a well-armed and alert city, and on a cold-blooded calculation that it would be cheaper to pay than to endure the ravaging of their countryside and a war. So the raiders campaigning among the cities of western Asia Minor were for the moment in search of wealth rather than land, hence their particular attention to the temples, which they knew were liable to hold considerable hoards of wealth, and hence also their willingness to be bought off. To the Erythraians, the bargain was probably worthwhile, so long as the Galatians did not return.
There is evidence also, though much less detailed, of fighting near Pergamon, commemorated by a statue group set up at Delos later to honour the whole Attalid family. It included verses which state that Philetairos fought the Galatians successfully, which fits well enough with his friendship towards the Greek cities, such as Kyzikos, which had also fought them.30 The claim, however, is somewhat vague, and may not imply much in the way of fighting; self-glorification after a minor success was not unknown at the time. Also inland, at the city of Thyateira, a man saw his son captured and then rescued, and put up a tablet in remembrance, and gave thanks to Apollo. This is precisely dated to 275 BC.31 Neither of these cities, note, was captured, and perhaps not even seriously attacked.
These Galatian raids, stretching from Kyzikos to Didyma, all took place in the lands ruled by King Antiochos I, and it was his responsibility to combat the invaders. Individual cities such as Kyzikos, Pergamon, Priene, and Miletos could defend themselves against such minor attacks, and did so with some success, if at the cost of some danger to the city’s territory outside the walls. Others might bribe the invaders to leave, as at Erythrai. Open sites such as Ilion and Didyma were indefensible except by a royal army. In the case of Ilion in fact, measures were soon taken by Antiochos I to provide a refuge at nearby place called Petra, probably on a stony hill (‘Petra’) in an area of high land.32 This place was to be politically attached to either Ilion or its neighbour Skepsis, one of the cities which had re-established itself rather than continue as part of the synoecism of Alexandria Troas. Petra was to be available to the peasants living on royal land nearby as a refuge. The date of the documents in which this is recorded is about 275, and so it fits into the history of the time; probably the measures were taken as a result of the brief occupation of Ilion by the Galatians a year or so earlier and their continuing ravages.
It has to be said that, if the expressions of horror are laid to one side, the Galatians’ campaign was rather less than successful. Only unfortified places were captured; loot came from unprotected temples and from ravaging the countryside, or from bribes to leave. This was not a campaign of widespread terror and devastation. A calculation of their strength suggests that the three tribes were in fact not particularly powerful. If, as is suggested, two groups commanded by Leonnorios and Loutarios numbered about 20,000 people, half of whom were families, each man commanded only about 5000 warriors, which is about the force a reasonably large city could field; the Tektosages, coming along later, seem to have been perhaps even fewer. 5000 warriors was a force which would certainly threaten a powerful city, though casualties were clearly to be avoided if possible; when a royal army came up they would necessarily need to retire quickly, or consolidate all three into a larger central force.
The defensible cities could therefore look after themselves, with a man in charge to stiffen civic spines, and the Galatians could be effectively denied them; areas without defences could be provided with places of security into which their populations could move if necessary, as at Petra in the Troad, or in the fortified posts in the countryside of Priene organized by Sotas. But this did not solve the major problem, which was the presence in Antiochos’ territory of a hostile army liable to damage any cultivated land, any villages they could find, any undefended towns, and any open temple. The only security would be to drive them out, to gather an army, as had Sotas at Priene, and defeat the invaders in battle, though it is not likely that many cities could field an army capable of meeting any of the tribes in battle. The alternative might be to pay them to refrain, as did Polykritos at Erythrai – though this would only work if both sides could be trusted, though there is no evidence that the Galatians broke any of their agreements.
In the absence of the complete annihilation of the invaders, therefore, as by Antigonos, it would be necessary to pin down the Galatian armies to a particular region or regions by means of a negotiated treaty. Treaties were something they evidently respected, judging by the agreements made with Erythrai and with Bithynia. If Antiochos could bring them to accept a treaty, then western Asia Minor would be secure for the rest of the king’s life, at least. It would also provide the Galatians with what they were aiming for, a new homeland, and no doubt this aim had quickly been understood by their victims and by the king.
There were probably arguments in the royal court and in the cities about the morality of this procedure, since it was evidently a sort of blackmail on an international scale, whereby the Galatian threats would seem to be successful. And yet the settlement of groups of Greeks or Macedonians on someone else’s land was hardly an unusual business, and there were many such colonial cities in Syria, and some in Asia Minor. The only difference would be that the lords of the land would be Galatians, not Greeks, though to be sure the resulting society would certainly be different. This may well be the background to the distinctly poor territory they were eventually provided to settle on; it was also territory scarcely under detailed Seleukid government, and so a cynic would say it might as well go to the Galatians if it would keep them quiet. It was also no doubt in the king’s mind that by settling them they would be a source of mercenaries, just as his brother-in-law Antigonos had calmed his kingdom in part by recruiting them.
To understand what took place it is necessary to recall the political situation in Asia Minor which present from the Galatian invasion. The Galatians were allies of the Bithynian king and so also of his allies in the Northern League. They had divided themselves into three armies, each of which was raiding its own part of western Asia Minor, which in fact meant the cities and temples and farmland from the Bithynian border to the edge of Karia.
Karia in fact appears to have been left alone, possibly by agreement with its satrap, possibly because it was a mountainous and intricate land with many cities, all fortified, which made it very difficult to attack. As a region it tended towards independence, but exactly who ruled there in the 270s is not known. It had been under Pleistarchos, a brother of King Kassandros of Macedon, until about 280; it is generally assumed to have slid under Seleukid control when Pleistarchos died, and to have been governed by a Seleukid satrap, but nothing is certain; the failure of the Galatians to attack it in the 270s is suggestive that it was protected in some way, possibly by its fortifications, perhaps by a local treaty between whoever exercised government there and the Galatian force which had the southern franchise, the Tektosages.33
The three tribes were clearly operating independently of each other, and this was obviously the purpose of their separation. The treaty which Polykritos of Erythrai made to fend off the Galatian attack was with Leonnorios, the commander or leader of the Tolistobogii, operating in the central region, but the other two tribes were not involved. This division of the enemy forces provided Antiochos with the opportunity of tackling them singly.
The most dangerous of these, and the one operating closest to Antiochos’ own headquarters at Sardis, was the Tolistobogii, under Leonnorios. The first necessity would be to collect a sufficiently large army to face the Galatians in battle and then to compel them to stand and fight. If each had about 5000 warriors, they could be tackled by the royal army. They had a tendency to move fast, though, and they were furious in fighting, and they had a competent cavalry contingent as part of their force. Leonnorios was clearly a capable commander, both militarily and diplomatically. There is no indication in fact that the three tribes were together in the fight, and it was probably with the Tolistobogii alone. Antiochos would need an army of double the Galatians’ size at least, and probably larger, to ensure victory; a Hellenistic army was composed of a phalanx of sarissa-armed infantry to which was attached light infantry and cavalry; it was a formidable army, but it could be vulnerable in open country when faced by an unorthodox enemy – like the Galatians. A secret weapon would also help.
The preliminary manoeuvring is nowhere detailed, but the one place which the Galatians would have to defend was their camp, which will have held both their families and their stored treasure. Antiochos, once he had located the camp, would need only to advance and threaten to attack it, at which point the Galatians would have to come out in its defence. The site of the camp is not known, but from the range of the Tolistobogian army’s actions – Ephesos to Pergamon and inland to Thyateira – the base was somewhere in the region of Magnesia on the Hermos. Sardis, Antiochos’ headquarters, was further up the Hermos River Valley, and Thyateira was on its Lykos tributary of the Maiandros. It may be presumed that the battle was fought in this area.
Antiochos fought and won his battle. It became famous because he used elephants, which apparently the Galatians had not encountered before, at least not in battle. They scared either the Galatians or, more likely, their horses; and they were also capable of breaking down, or climbing over, the necessarily flimsy defences which is all that the Galatians can have had time to construct at their camp.34 The victory will have been followed by a negotiated peace – there is no indication that the Tolistobogii were destroyed, only that they were defeated. It is said that Antiochos allocated them territory in the interior, a matter which will be discussed later.
The overall record of the Galatians in warfare in Greece and Asia Minor was therefore very mixed. They had twice defeated the Macedonians, but had been defeated twice in Greece, at Delphi and Thermopylai, and their retreat had been very costly. They were very good at ravaging enemy territory by surprise attacks, which reduced the number of opponents they might have to fight, but were defeated in the only battle they fought. Their reputation was as destructive savages, and yet Antiochos deliberately refrained from annihilating them when he could probably have done so, and then permitted them to settle within his kingdom. Despite losing so many battles, therefore, this band of Galatians had succeeded in their aim. This suggests that their leader Leonnorios was not simply their military commander but a clever diplomat.
This was a victory over only one part of the Galatians. The other two armies were not involved, though it is possible that they sent some of their warriors to assist the Tolistobogii. We have little or no information about the Trokmoi, whose raiding territory was in the north, and who were probably the group who attacked Kyzikos and possibly Ilion. The Tektosages, however, can be traced still raiding for some time after Antiochos’ victory, yet in their southern area. After their success at Didyma, and partial failures at Miletos and Priene, they evidently moved away. They are said to have been originally allocated the interior,35 though it seems that at first they operated against those southern Aegean coastal cities, which were clearly a richer prey than the inland cities. They do not seem to have attacked Karia, but there are signs of raids into Lykia, and on cities along the great Royal Road heading east towards Syria. That they later went raiding in the interior does not mean they were not originally allocated the southern Aegean coast as well, only that they eventually concentrated on communities in interior Asia Minor, and so this was assumed to have been their allotted territory from the first in later accounts.
It is necessary at this point to discuss the dating of that Elephant Victory. Several dates from 278 to 267 BC have been argued for; 278 is, of course, far too early, for the Galatians were still occupied at Byzantion and in Bithynia at that time and 267 is also outside the likely range. The evidence for this late date (usually actually reckoned to be 269 or 268) is an inscription from a pair of villages, Neoteichos and Kiddioukome, near Laodikeia-ad-Lykon, which reveals that captives taken from these villages had been ransomed by two local officials.36 This is the only indication that raiding continued as late as this – except possibly raiding into Lykia; this is also the Tectosages’ raiding region.
It is clear that Galatian raids were still happening in the area a little before the stone with the inscription was set up, which is calculated to be in 267. It is also clear that this was a very local affair, in which the captives were ransomed by a local official. From this it is too much to suggest that the Elephant Victory, generally regarded as the decisive battle which stopped the Galatian raids, was fought just before the events mentioned on the stone. No reference to such a victory appears on that stone, only a reference to the ongoing war.
To understand what was happening it is necessary to realize that the three warbands were operating separately, and had been since they left Bithynia, and that the Elephant Victory was fought against just one of the bands, the Tolistobogii. The area where the villages were is in the south and interior, and therefore this was the area allocated to the Tektosages, who were not forced to settle down by the treaty which followed the Elephant Victory (which was, obviously, with the Tolistobogii), and who could therefore continue their raids where the Tolistobogii could not.
The date 274 for the Victory was long assumed, or calculated before the village-ransom story intervened. That was also the date of the outbreak of the First Syrian War, between Ptolemy II and Antiochos I.37 This was superficially a quite independent development, in which Antiochos had intrigued with Magas, the Ptolemaic governor of Cyrene, who wanted to obtain his political independence. Antiochos’ daughter Apama was given to Magas in marriage, which signified an alliance, for the moment, and this was an obvious affront to Ptolemy. Ptolemy was therefore faced by possible war on two fronts; he succeeded in stopping Magas’ attack in Libya, and then turned to attack Antiochos in Syria. The timing of the outbreak of this war is certainly in 274, and it is perhaps best to see that the Elephant Victory by Antiochos, was, for Ptolemy, a dangerous moment, since it seemed to mean that Antiochos would be free to engage fully in the Syrian War, while Ptolemy was preoccupied with Magas.
The calculation evidently went wrong. Magas’ attack on Egypt failed, either to preoccupy Ptolemy or to reach Egypt. The Elephant Victory did not end the Galatian war, since only one of the tribes was involved, and the others could continue raiding; it did, however reduce the problem in Asia Minor. Antiochos must leave some of his forces in Asia Minor rather than send them against Ptolemy, and this may have been an element in Ptolemy’s decision to fight. No doubt Leonnorios was conscious that he had an opportunity to reach terms with Antiochos because of the Egyptian war. So Antiochos was faced by what he had planned for his enemy, a war on two fronts, against Ptolemy in Syria, and against some of the Galatians in Asia. The ransoming of the village prisoners therefore was part of the continuing war, and bears no relation to the Elephant Victory.
Raids continued, in the south of Asia Minor, for up to twenty years after the battle, wherever it took place. These raids therefore were the actions of a part of the Galatians who had not been involved in the battle – and the obvious group who were at war still at that time was the Tektosages; their allocation of the interior as their raiding territory is in fact what they did, not necessarily what was their original assignment. Their original region for raiding was the south, Karia, as is suggested by their activities in the Miletos area. Denied any attempt to attack Karia outside the Miletos/Priene region, either by treaty or by the prospect of fighting in a particularly difficult country, and perhaps driven away from the southern coast by local or royal resistance and counter-attacks (as at Priene) they raided instead along the handy route of the Royal Road, along the fertile lands of their Maiandros valley and further east.
A few places can show their work. At Themisonion the citizens hid in a cave, supposed to have been divinely revealed to them, at the moment of danger.38 The city of Themisonion was in fact only founded in 251, so either the raid there had come very late in the raiding period, or more likely, it came earlier than that date if the people of the area were only formed into a city afterwards, and the citizens recalled the raid as a traumatic moment in their pre-urban history. Fifty kilometres to the north, and directly on the Royal Road, was Laodikeia-ad-Lykon, in whose territory was found the villagers’ inscription referring to local people being captured and released, the war still continuing; this raid, according to the dating of the inscription, probably happened in 269 or 268. Seventy kilometres further east along the Road, at Apameia-Kelainai, a city which had been the local capital for King Antigonos I for a couple of decades and so might be expected to have reasonable defences, there was another divine intervention, whereby the local river god Marsyas raised a flood, so deterring a Galatian attack.39 The date of this event is not known, but perhaps between the ransoming of the villagers and the attack on Themisonion would be appropriate.
Two cases of Galatians penetrating into Lykia are recorded. One is from Tlos in the south-west part of that country, recorded, or referred to, in an epigram of Stephanos of Byzantion. He mentions that Pisidians, Paionians, and Thracians were involved in the raid along with the Galatians; how many is not stated and one wonders if the poet were simply including other notorious frontier raiders because they had that reputation, though it might be that deserters and malcontents from all three had banded with Galatians to exploit the disturbed situation.40 This, however, might better be dated to the disturbed period of the war of the brothers in the 230s. The other Lycian record is from Limyra, close to the south coast, recorded on a stone inscription which seems to have been added to the balustrade of a circular temple after the temple had been built. The temple was built in the 270s, but the stone, and certainly the inscription, is probably later; this is not good evidence really for any raid.41 These southern raids, in so far as they are definitely by the Galatians, may be attributed to the Tektosages, though it is probable that they took place in the few years following the Elephant Victory – that involving the two villages was in 269 or 268, and this may well be the last; it might be, however, that these had nothing to do with the settlement of the Tektosages.
The question arises why Antiochos did not finish the job he had evidently begun with the Elephant Victory. The Tolistobogii, pinned down by their treaty until at least 261, when Antiochos died, presumably settled down in their new homeland; the Trokmoi may have continued raiding, but no evidence exists either way, though it might have been fairly easy to provoke them to battle. The Tektosages clearly did continue raiding for a few years. The answer is that the king was distracted from this task by the outbreak of war with Ptolemy II, the ‘First Syrian War’, which was a much more serious matter than the raids of relatively small Galatian forces in inland Asia Minor, especially since one, and possibly two, of those forces had already been neutralized by being given land to settle on. So from 274 onwards Antiochos was fully occupied in Syria for several years, defending his inherited territories there.42 By about 270, if it is possible to generalize from the single case of the village near Laodikeia, the raids were on a small scale, and any captives could be easily rescued by paying a ransom.
Antiochos’ major reaction in Asia Minor to these raids was to fortify his defences. So far as can be seen no city with good defences was ever taken by the Galatians, in Greece or Macedon or in Asia Minor. The Royal Road, however, was clearly vulnerable if such raids returned. The standard Seleukid response to long-standing dangers such as this was to fortify, in particular to found cities which were populated by Seleukid colonists/citizens, who governed the cities, owned estates in the neighbourhood, and lived within the fortifications.
This was the basis of the kingdom’s defence in Syria against the current Ptolemaic attack, and seems to have been the response in Baktria, under Antiochos’ rule while his father was still alive, against nomad attacks. Now it was applied systematically in Asia Minor. A string of such cities were founded along the Road, Laodikeia-ad-Lykon and Apameia-Kelainai were two of them, and both had been subjected to attack, and not taken. Both were in fact existing urban centres, taken up, re-founded by the imposition of Greek and Macedonian settlers (who became the instant ruling group when settled in the cities), and given new names adopted from the Seleukid royal family. More such cities were founded further along the Road, especially in the vulnerable stretch north of Pisidia between the lakes and the mountains in the centre of the peninsula – Apollonia, Metropolis, Antiocheia, Seleukeia, and others. These also formed a guard against raids made by Pisidians out of the mountains to the south.43
These cities anchored Seleukid power firmly in this south-central region, and the royal foundations were supplemented by other cities planted, or organized, by important estate holders who were to a degree partly independent of the royal authority. Themisonion, for example, was apparently founded by one Themison; north of the dense concentration of cities south of the lakes was Dokimeion, founded by Dokimos, one of the most agile and slippery of the Macedonian officers in the confused period after Alexander’s death; further east were two cities, Lysias and Philomelion, founded by a family of local lords, also Macedonian soldiers, who can be traced for four generations as commanders for a series of Seleukid kings, and even further, perhaps to the mid second century; and the man whose steward the villagers of Kiddioukome and Neoteichos thanked for rescuing the captives was Akhaios, probably a younger brother of Seleukos I and the founder of a notable family with much influence in Asia Minor for the next two centuries. One of the results of the Macedonian conquest was the imposition not only of these cities of Macedonian type, but the establishment of men such as these who possessed large estates and were established as the new ruling aristocracy. The raids of the Galatians had the effect of forcing further city-founding and driving existing cities to build or improve their fortifications. And this pattern of society had its effect eventually on the Galatians themselves.
The Galatians in Asia Minor had therefore upset the balance of power, first by protecting the Bithynians and the Northern League, in effect by guarding them, so that by the end of the First Syrian War, in 271, their independence was no longer in question. Second, they had forced some cities, such as Kyzikos and Priene and Pergamon, to develop and employ their own forces in their own defence, and had promoted a social revolution by the establishment of numerous new Seleukid colony cities in various parts of the land, simultaneously energizing urban autonomy and extending the territory allocated to the new cities. They had dealt a terminal blow to Seleukid hopes of controlling the whole of Asia Minor, and therefore using that as their base for recovering Macedon. They had established themselves, with or without Seleukid permission, in the centre of the country, the further division of which they had promoted.