Chapter 6

Mercenaries

Kelts in all regions were readily recruited as mercenary soldiers by every Hellenistic state in the eastern Mediterranean. Even in the preceding period, they are known to have been recruited by Dionysios I, the tyrant of Syracuse, and by his later imitator Agathokles. Dionysios sent some of his men to assist Sparta in its Theban War in the 370s and 360s.¹ As a result when the invasions of Greece and Asia came, the Galatians’ fighting abilities were not unknown, and their ability to create civil disorder was also known. Plato referred to them as warlike as well as having a large capacity for alcohol.² In the Hellenistic period notices of their employment occur somewhat irregularly, but sufficiently frequently to imply that Galatians were employed as mercenary soldiers throughout the period, and in every state of any size, though there were some exceptions and variations.

In a sense King Nikomedes of Bithynia might be said to be the first employer of Galatians as soldiers in the Hellenistic period, but the agreement he and they made in 278/277, by which the army under Leonnorios was brought across the Bosporos, was a formal alliance, sealed by a written treaty, rather than the mere hiring of a band of warriors by the king.³ When joined by the army under Loutarios there was another treaty, or alliance, directed against the Seleukid kingdom. The Galatian campaigns in Asia Minor which followed showed that they were operating as an independent political unit or units, but not under control of Nikomedes. In that very time, while the Asian campaigns were still continuing, other Galatians were also recruited by other kings. The earliest notice of their employment in the region is by Antigonos Gonatas, who recruited Galatians after having defeated, and he claimed, exterminated a major warband at the Battle of Lysimacheia in 277. It is generally assumed that these were survivors of that murderous battle, but this seems highly unlikely – such survivors would surely scatter distantly from their enemy.⁴ More probably there were other smaller bands roaming the Macedonian countryside who could easily be recruited once Antigonos had a victorious and cohesive Macedonian force at his disposal. In other words, the alternatives for the Galatians were recruitment or annihilation.

The employment of Galatians by the kings was therefore begun remarkably quickly, within two or three years of the first invasion of Macedon.⁵ The earlier employment in Sicily and their brief appearance with Sparta in the 370s were secondary effects from the activities of the Gauls in Italy. It is odd, however, that other Greek states than Sparta failed to use them, even while recognizing their usefulness in battle. Once Antigonos demonstrated that quality again, however, other kings quickly took note, at least of their fighting abilities. By 274 Pyrrhos in Epeiros and Ptolemy in Egypt had recruited substantial numbers, and then soon discovered that they were much more difficult to control than other soldiers.

It also quickly became clear that they were not familiar with normal Hellenistic military practices when defeated. They contributed to Pyrrhos’ defeat of Antigonos in his invasion of Macedon, but then Pyrrhos stood by while his Galatians looted the Macedonian royal graves at Aigai.⁶ This was one of the factors – his own feckless political behaviour was the main one – which alienated the Macedonians who had welcomed Pyrrhos in the first place.

If Pyrrhos had a force of Galatians in his army in 274 in his invasion of Macedon, and he had only returned from Italy the year before, he must have recruited the Galatians during late 275 or early 274, virtually as soon as he arrived from Italy, unless his son Ptolemaios, whom he had left to watch affairs in Epeiros while he was away, had begun recruitment a little earlier. It was only in 275, with his defeat in Italy, that Pyrrhos was reduced to commanding a small army (said to be only 8500 strong),⁷ and it was only in 274 that he seems to have determined to attack Antigonos in Macedon. In the same way, the fact that Ptolemy II had a force of 4000 Galatians in his employ in Egypt, also in 274, implies that he had recruited them some time earlier, and so we arrive again at 275 as the likely time of their recruitment.⁸ This was only three years after the Galatians’ retreat from Greece, but only in that year or 274 did Antiochos I gain his Elephant Victory. These two Galatian defeats, in Europe and in Asia, made them employable; together with the killings at Lysimacheia, the defeats tamed the Galatians to some degree, and made their form of warfare less frightening, though probably also less effective.

The defeats greatly reduced their hopes of loot, because resistance to any of their raids would obviously now be effective – as it often was in the campaign in Asia – but they also opened up the promise of pay as mercenary soldiers for their young men. There was much less likelihood of their achieving wide conquests after these defeats, though, as Kommontorios showed at Tylis, and the Galatians in Asia also, smaller niche-kingdoms were possible, and even new states in less salubrious regions. The men were also, at least at this time, reported to be cheap to employ, which suggests a certain desperation in their homelands, or perhaps a lack of research into standards of pay by the chiefs.⁹ This discrepancy in pay will not have lasted long once the Galatians and the Greeks began talking to each other; it may have been one of the root causes of a Galatian mutiny which took place at Megara (against Antigonos) in 265. Nevertheless, the speed with which advantage was taken of the recruitment possibilities by the kings is remarkable.

No doubt also the display of self-sacrificing resistance in the battle between Antigonos’ and Pyrrhos’ armies was impressive. Antigonos’ Macedonians and his elephant corps surrendered quickly once their defeat became clear, but the Galatians fought on until massacred.¹⁰ (Admiration has been expressed for their constancy, but their conduct, after it was clear that their side had been defeated, must be regarding as a pointless waste.¹¹) The surrenders by the Macedonians were in fact, fully in accordance with normal military Hellenistic practice, and both they and the elephant corps were instantly recruited by Pyrrhos into his own army – indeed he used the elephants with their Indian mahouts at once, turning them around in the middle of the battle to attack their former fellow soldiers in Antigonos’ army. The Galatians clearly did not understand this practice and went on fighting until destroyed. No doubt some of them will have survived, but the myth of their military effectiveness was destroyed. Their earlier defeats had sent the same message. A parallel myth of loyalty to their paymaster was started. Both myths were, of course, equally untrue.

Then it was Pyrrhos’ turn to discover the difficulties of commanding Galatians. Antigonos, defeated, fled the battlefield and took refuge in Thessaloniki. Pyrrhos quickly occupied western Macedon and Thessaly. In the process his Galatian soldiers arrived at Aigai, the old Macedonian capital, where the former kings were buried. Tombs like these, under the heaps of soil and very conspicuous, were familiar sights to Galatians, who buried their leaders in the same way. They also buried them, as did the Macedonians, with treasures. As they will have done elsewhere on discovering such a site, the Galatians set to work to dig up any treasures they could find in the Macedonian royal tombs.¹² This naturally incensed the Macedonians, and quite probably many of those Macedonian soldiers who had recently surrendered to Pyrrhos will have deserted back to Antigonos when they heard the news – they were, after all, Macedonians, whoever was king. Pyrrhos himself paid no attention to the vandalism and desecration – he could scarcely afford to dismiss or punish the perpetrators, since his army was still relatively small, so he ignored their conduct; he surely knew the problem this was going to cause him. This was therefore yet another reason for his new unpopularity in his conquered kingdom. His subsequent decision to leave Macedon and move into Greece, taking his Galatians with him, was presumably in part a result of the change in Macedonian attitude towards him, as well as an effect of his own constantly restless spirit. Antigonos swiftly recovered the lost parts of Macedon when Pyrrhos had left.

In the same year as this battle in Macedon, Ptolemy II experienced his own Galatian problem. In 275 his viceroy in Cyrene, his half-brother Magas, married the daughter of Antiochos I. This apparent alliance was an obvious threat to Ptolemy in Egypt, who now had open enemies on both of his international borders, north in Syria and west in Cyrenaica. Magas soon proclaimed himself king, and so became a clear and active threat to Ptolemy, for one reason for his self-promotion was to lay a claim to the Egyptian kingdom, and in 274 he launched an invasion of Egypt from Cyrene. Antiochos I, a little later, also indicated an intention to fight on Magas’ side, though for the moment he was preoccupied in Asia Minor (see the previous chapter).¹³ Exactly when the fighting began in Syria is not clear, but Antiochos was busy in Asia Minor all through 275 and into 274 winning the Elephant Victory. Ptolemy therefore had a year’s warning of the developing trouble, and one of his preparations was to actively recruit more soldiers, including those Galatians.

Recruiting Galatians was clearly a process which, conducted from Egypt, will have taken some time. The potential recruits had to be contacted, presumably by a soldier, an officer, in Ptolemy’s service, persuaded to join, probably paid an advance, then transported to Egypt. Where the contract was made is not known, but it must have been in the Balkans or, less likely, Asia – though maybe Antiochos would have been pleased to see Galatians leaving to serve elsewhere, but also annoyed that they would be reinforcing Ptolemy. The number of men recruited is put at 4000, which will have required at least fifty, and perhaps more, shipjourneys to move them to Egypt. Yet they were embodied and organized by the time Magas’ invasion began late in 274, so the recruitment had probably begun, like Pyrrhos’, in 275.

Magas’ rebellion against Ptolemy was halted by a rising against him by his Libyan subjects, taking advantage of his absence from his new kingdom in his attempt to claim the kingship in Egypt. As a result he had to turn back to secure his Cyrenaican base; there has to be a strong suspicion that intrigue by Ptolemy lay behind the Libyan rebellion.¹⁴

The most curious aspect of the crisis is that Ptolemy’s Galatians themselves then rebelled and are said to have intended to ‘take over Egypt’, in Pausanias’ words.¹⁵ What this might really mean is difficult to discern, but it can hardly be that they intended to overthrow the Ptolemaic government and seize power. 4000 soldiers were hardly enough for such a task, given that Ptolemy could dispose of an army ten times that size, while the Galatians had been in Egypt only a short time, perhaps only a few months. Then most of them probably could not speak Greek, and they would hardly be familiar with the political situation in Egypt except in the most superficial way. They would clearly need guidance in their exploit. To seize Egypt was actually Magas’ aim, which suggests that it was being attributed to the Galatians because both they and Magas were rebelling against the same man at the same time. So we may take Pausanias’ words as being an inaccurate summary of their intentions – or perhaps simply a later assumption that that is what they intended to do.

Yet it must always be remembered that, in these early days of the Galatian presence in the eastern Mediterranean, the aim of most of the Galatians who had not returned to the north to found the Scordiscian state was to find new homes for themselves. This was the case at Tylis and in Asia – both of which, it may be noted, succeeded in this aim – and it is from groups in these areas and familiar with the aims of those larger groups that the recruits probably came. So when they saw the Ptolemaic government in difficulties, and that most of its army had been sent to face Magas to the west, or to face Antiochos in Syria, they may well have thought the opportunity was right for them to strike for a new homeland. This need not mean ‘Egypt’ as a whole, but just an area carved out of the Ptolemaic state. Their Balkan fellows had carved out two new states in that way, and their Asian fellows were being allotted land by Antiochos at his own expense, even as the Ptolemaic Kelts were in rebellion; by putting Ptolemy under threat, they may have felt that Ptolemy II might do the same, perhaps in Syria somewhere, perhaps as military settlers (cleruchs) in Egypt; there was, after all, a generation-long tradition of planting settlers in new cities throughout Syria, especially in the north, and of allotting estates to Greek cleruchs in Egypt.

Ptolemy, faced by threats on both of his borders, could not afford to succumb to yet another threat, and one in the very centre of his power, not even by buying off the rebels – mutineers, he might call them – for fear of stimulating imitations. Not surprisingly, he reacted with the sort of savagery which was normally attributed to the Galatians themselves. How it was achieved is not known, but he induced the rebels to move to a desert island in the Nile, and there he let them starve and fight each other to death.¹⁶

There is so much here which requires explanation that it is difficult to know where to start. The very idea of a group of recently recruited mercenaries, who were obviously ignorant of the country they had been taken to, mounting an attempted coup d’état within only months of their arrival is both astonishing and ludicrous. It surely implies that something else was going on beneath the surface of events. One would expect that, at least, the idea had been put into their heads – or rather in the hands of the Galatians’ leading officers – by someone much more familiar with Egypt and its government than they were. If that interpretation is reasonable, the obvious instigators would be either Magas or Antiochos, who had already conspired together to form their political and military alliance and launch the First Syrian War. Magas’ attack clearly came before Antiochos was ready, and the rebellion in Libya which forced him to turn back in his attempted invasion is a mirror image of the Galatian ‘rebellion’ in Egypt. Mutual intrigues by those allies to destabilize Ptolemy, and by Ptolemy to force Magas to retreat, would seem the best explanation for the prevention of Magas’ invasion and the prevention of Ptolemy’s military reply, both rulers operating to undermine the enemy by instigating rebellions behind the front line. But one must also, in that case, if the Galatians were to be included in the plot, assume that an agent in Egypt persuaded the Galatians, or at least their officers, to mount the coup, and it must have been someone of influence in the Egyptian regime if he was to be persuasive. Given the Galatians’ recent history, Antiochos, being more familiar with them than Magas, might be the most likely instigator, especially if at least some of them had been recruited in Asia.

The matter of persuading the Galatians to move to a desert island is equally unexplained and mysterious. Ptolemy could only do this if he had already brought the rebellion to an end before getting them to move, perhaps by agreeing mendaciously to some of their demands. The move was, therefore, their punishment, and was also Ptolemy’s way of warning others who might rebel or mount a coup. Whether he expected them all to die is not known, but he was certainly ruthless and unscrupulous enough to intend that from the start and angry enough to see that it was carried out. Since they were isolated it would seem he had ‘sealed off ’ the island, no doubt using his fleet, to prevent any escapes – but equally there is also no doubt that he will have been unsuccessful in this, at least in part. (One may recall the ease with which Brennos passed the Spercheios by calling up large numbers of swimmers.) It is highly unlikely that all 4000 men killed each other, or starved to death, and some would be able to swim to the shore. It suited the story put about afterwards to end with the rebels’ deaths. Starvation would thus be the original intention. Mutual killing amongst the rebels was a bonus. And that mutual killing was presumably the result of political developments amongst the survivors, some of whom were no doubt enraged at the situation to which the plotters had brought them.

The story was not finished with the extermination of the island prisoners, either by death or escape, or by the capture of the last few to survive. The court poet Kallimachos included in his Hymn to Delos a reference to the Keltic attacks on Delphi, and added to that account an explanation that Ptolemy himself had participated in the suppression of Keltic outrages on the Nile island – he even claimed that it was survivors of the attack on Delphi who took part in the Egyptian affair, and suffered the just punishment – which was, of course, quite possible.

The whole interpretation of events in this way was propaganda, with Ptolemy appropriating to himself the defence of civilization against the barbarians in imitation of Antigonos’ rescue of Macedon, or Antiochos’ defence of the cities of Asia. This was a matter which could, more convincingly be attributed to both Antigonos and Antiochos, whose victories were rather more impressive than Ptolemy’s, and yet Ptolemy’s interpretation was not wholly outrageous – a Galatian force of 4000 men rampaging through Egypt would be a formidable threat, and could cause enormous damage. That his means of suppression did not entirely succeed in preventing later rebellions and mutinies only shows that savagery of itself is generally counter-productive. The magnitude of the crisis was perhaps responsible for Ptolemy’s brutality, though it may not have been uncongenial to him to inflict all those deaths. But to allow the Galatians to survive, hostile and within Egypt, would seriously undermine his regime, and might even cause its collapse; there was a lot at stake, and the interpretation of Pausanias that they meant to ‘take over Egypt’, may not be too wide of the mark. Ptolemy’s proclaiming that his victory over them was equal to those of his contemporary kings may really be a sign of his relief.

So the Galatians once more had a major effect on international affairs, for one result of the war with Magas, and Ptolemy’s inability to follow up Magas’ retreat, was to leave Cyrenaica as an independent kingdom for the next thirty years. By the time the Galatian rebellion in Egypt was over, Antiochos had been able to reach Syria with his forces, so that Ptolemy’s intended attack on the Seleukid territories failed to have any effect, and Antiochos was able to threaten Ptolemy’s territory. Antiochos was himself distracted from finishing his work in Asia Minor by the outbreak of the war, so that Galatian raids (by the Tektosages) continued for some time after his initial victory over the Tolistobogii.

Employing Galatians as mercenaries was therefore a difficult art. Pyrrhos took some of them with him into Greece in his final fatal campaign, and they were inherited by his sons, until the leaderless army surrendered in its entirety to Antigonos. The result was that Antigonos ended by employing Pyrrhos’ mercenaries, including the Galatians. Antigonos continued to employ them, and others, but faced a mutiny of one of his Galatian units at Megara in 265, which he resolved by attacking them and killing most or all of them – the Ptolemy solution, and one he had resorted to in the Chersonese fourteen years before. (Of course, it would only be cosmic justice if this group included those who had rifled the royal tombs, but that seems unlikely.)¹⁷ Massacre seems to have been the automatic default position in face of Galatian hostility, by whatever king or regime faced the problem.

From then on, there are only occasional notices of Galatian mercenaries until the late 220s, a fact which may be put down to the general lack of source material for that period rather than their absence. It is to be noted that at least four Galatian groups – at the Thracian Chersonese, in the war between Antigonos and Pyrrhos, in Egypt, and at Megara – were subject to suppression by massacre. This is surely an indication of the fear they engendered in their employers; it was obviously dangerous to recruit them.

The early instances in the 270s of kings recruiting Galatians meant that other kings did the same, but in all cases this obviously had to be done with some care, especially after these early awkward experiences. Antiochos II had a unit of Galatians in Antioch before 246, acting as a guard for his second wife Berenike, a daughter of Ptolemy II. When he died in 246 some of the men of this bodyguard murdered Berenike and her son in the palace. This was either part of a conspiracy with some of the local citizens, two of whom are mentioned as partaking, or on instructions from the new King Seleukos II. The instigator of the killings is, however, usually said to have been Antiochos’ first wife Laodike, with whom he had been reconciled in the recent past.¹⁸ One reason for it was that a Ptolemaic invasion of north Syria was approaching the city, and it would be very likely that, if Berenike and her child fell into Ptolemy’s hands the boy would be proclaimed as the new Seleukid king, a rival to the two sons of Antiochos II; one Ptolemaic governor, in fact, did assume that the boy had succeeded.¹⁹ (It is also quite possible that Antiochos left instructions for their killing in the event of his death.) This was the start of a new Syrian War, the third. A second result was a dispute between Antiochos II’s and Laodike’s two sons, which developed into a dynastic war lasting twenty years, the ‘War of the Brothers’. Naturally, since there were three armies involved, all of which always needed more men, Galatians were recruited by all sides, above all by the younger and politically weak of the two brothers, Antiochos Hierax, but the Galatian relationship with Hierax appears more as an alliance than as a recruitment of mercenaries. (See next chapter).

One Galatian and one Seleukid officer, the first a mercenary, the second a royal officer, joined together to murder Seleukos III during his invasion of Galatia in 223.²⁰ This in fact is a good indication that, despite the earlier troubles, by the middle of the third century the Galatian mercenaries had become integrated into the Seleukid military system, whereas at the start of the 270s they had been still following their own traditions. It is rather chilling to find that the assassins of choice, both to kill Seleukid rulers and to kill those conspiring against them, were Galatians.

Another Syrian War broke out in 221 and shortly afterwards a new great war began in Greece. Once again there was widespread recruitment of Galatians. The Galatians involved in the great armies that were formed grew from a few thousands in the early years – the 4000 Ptolemy killed is the highest number recorded until the 220s – to a much greater overall total. Those mentioned for that time in the sources are never counted, though the mutinous group at Megara was big enough to require the full Macedonian army to put their mutiny down, and it is likely that Antigonos’ early recruits numbered in the several thousands. From 223, however, the sources improve, notably thanks to Polybios, whose continuous account begins at that point, together with Livy, who was working from a different perspective, but often based himself on Polybios for eastern matters. For the time in which great battles took place the sources are almost adequate.

In 221 the Seleukid king Antiochos III, who inherited the throne when his brother was murdered, was young and inexperienced, was threatened by rebellions both in Asia Minor, where his cousin Akhaios was moving into independence, and in Iran, where the viceroy of the eastern territories (or the ‘Upper Satrapies’), Molon, came out in active rebellion. Exactly what Akhaios’ aim was at that time was not clear, but Molon, along with his two brothers, one of whom was the governor of another eastern province, clearly aimed to displace Antiochos and make himself king of the whole kingdom. To add to the difficulties Antiochos was persuaded to attack Egypt, partly as a means, it was hoped, of uniting the rebels against a common enemy. That ploy was a failure.

Two expeditions commanded by generals appointed by Antiochos failed to stop Molon. Sending such commanders had been the policy of Antiochos’ advisers, but the failure of both the generals and the advisers meant that Antiochos had to lead an expedition himself. Akhaios was for the moment loyal, and in Egypt there was a dynastic crisis and the succession of a young king amid a series of murders of members of his family. This political and dynastic paralysis, and the failure of a Seleukid invasion of Ptolemaic Syria, produced no Ptolemaic reaction, so despite the existence of a Ptolemaic war, it was apparently safe for the king to go on a campaign to the east. Antiochos seized control of his government and then of his army and marched east, meeting and defeating Molon in Babylonia.²¹

The two contending armies each included a contingent of Galatian soldiers. In Antiochos’ army they are called the Rigosages,²² and were, it may be assumed, a particular tribe or nation of Galatians hired through their rulers, and so fighting as an auxiliary force under their own leader. On Molon’s side the Galatian contingent are simply designated as ‘Galatians’.²³ In neither case are the numbers of the soldiers mentioned, but both units were large enough to stand in the line under a separate command. Their individual actions in the battle are not recorded.

The hiring of a complete community, such as the Rigosages, was highly unusual. Normally, as seems to have been the case in the armies of the 270s, the Galatians were enlisted as individuals, or perhaps as relatively small warbands, or units; no doubt separating the men from their Galatian leaders was seen to be a safety measure. Nikomedes of Bithynia had, of course, hired a whole community, and had used them successfully, but he had also swiftly redirected their warlike energies into Asia Minor as soon as possible. Later Attalos I hired a similar group, the Aigosages, but abandoned them almost at once as uncontrollable. The group who mutinied against Antigonos Gonatas at Megara may have been a communal hiring, possibly originally by Pyrrhos, though this can only be an assumption. The large group in Egypt who rebelled were evidently not cohesive, at least not at the end. Hiring a specific communal unit, probably under its own king or chief, such as were apparently the Rigosages, was clearly dangerous, since the force was under less than total command – Nikomedes lost control of his allies as soon as they moved south. Like the Megaran mutineers, such a force might rebel if it felt that it was in a strong enough position to win its point; its leader might possibly accept a bribe to change sides at a crucial moment. The war against Molon was an internal dynastic dispute where loyalties were indefinite and confused, though it seems that the Rigosages did apparently stay loyal; their subsequent history, however, is quite unknown.

The hiring of a whole national group was not repeated in the Seleukid army, nor were any Galatians recorded as being enlisted in any other of Antiochos III’s wars until the last battle at Magnesia in 190. It would therefore seem that he did not want Galatians in his force except in the most serious of emergencies, of which revolt and rebellion in the Roman war were the only occasions in the course of his reign. The preparations for Magnesia was such an emergency, and his army was substantially smaller in that engagement than in his earlier battles, hence perhaps the resort to hiring Galatians.²⁴ In the war with Molon, Antiochos was reduced to the forces he could mobilize in Syria and Mesopotamia alone, and not even all these; for Akhaios had taken a force into Asia Minor to campaign against Attalos of Pergamon, and another unit of several thousands, the ‘Kyrrhestai’, was in obdurate rebellion. That is, Antiochos only resorted to hiring Galatians as a matter of dire necessity. The hiring of a full independent Galatian nation in 221 was evidently such a case, as was the hiring of Galatians in 190.

What is even more surprising is that the opposing army, under Molon, also had a substantial Galatian contingent. Molon had governed the Iranian provinces for some years, and it seems unlikely that he had contact with the usual sources of mercenaries. Numbers again are unknown, but he had an army only a little smaller than that of Antiochos, so it would seem that he was as desperate to find extra troops as was the king. Molon’s army was mainly comprised of Seleukid forces which had been already stationed in Iran and the Upper Satrapies, which had been his viceroyalty until he rebelled, and so where Molon got his Galatians from is a puzzle. It is possible they were recruited from prisoners captured from the earlier armies sent against him, but most of these men seem to have escaped rather than were captured (and there is no record of any Galatians in those armies). It is also possible he had recruited them from Galatia in preparation for his rebellion. Otherwise the only supposition is that they had been posted to the eastern provinces as garrisons some time before, and were gathered up at the start of the rising (which would have course contradict my conclusion reached in the previous paragraph). It seems equally unlikely, since it was not necessary in the Seleukid military system to recruit mercenaries for garrison duty; there was a constant flow of recruits thanks to the conscription of young men for short service. The only possible origin of the men is in the war in which Seleukos III was killed. He was fighting at the time in Galatia, and the men might have been recruited then. We do not know.

It is also a puzzle where Antiochos found his Galatian unit. The best guess is that he had hired them in Galatia itself, and it was a constituent part of one of the Galatian states. Possibly they were inherited from his brother’s army, perhaps more likely they were hired by Akhaios while he was still loyal and passed on to Antiochos in the emergency of Molon’s rebellion. Again we do not know.²⁵

It is, however, clear from the description of Antiochos III’s army in the several campaigns during the next thirty years that Antiochos’ armies were normally fielded with no Galatian contingent. In the great force he brought to attack Egypt in 217, which was defeated at the Battle of Raphia, only one Galatian, ‘Lysimachos the Galatian’ is mentioned, clearly an officer; there were no Galatian private soldiers so Lysimachos was an officer in one of the Greek or Macedonian contingents in Antiochos’ army; he must have been thoroughly Hellenized to take on such a role successfully. There are no Galatians in the escalation of Seleukeia-in-Pieria in 219, none are referred to in the conquest of Palestine in 218, none in the Elburz campaign in 211, none in the Battle of Panion in 200, none in the Thracian campaigns in 196–194. The absence of Galatians is consistent all through, from the recruited group in the war against Molon in 220 to the Battle of Magnesia in 190. Most of these campaigns are described by Polybios and he details the various units of the army with great care; Cretans, Thracians, and Arabs are all, for instance, listed and numbered, as were any mercenaries. But there were no Galatians. It is clear that Antiochos did not recruit Galatians for these campaigns, and since he clearly had no prejudice against employing mercenaries as such, he may well have had a dislike of Galatians in particular; more likely he did not need them, having naturally sufficient resources from internal recruitment for his needs.

One might explain their absence in the early campaigns (except that against Molon) as due to the lack of contact with Galatia, because Asia Minor as a whole was under the domination of Akhaios or Attalos I (or before that, Antiochos Hierax) until 216. But from then on Antiochos had secured control of much of Asia Minor and could have recruited in Galatia if he wished, but he clearly did not choose to do so until he needed extra forces to face the Roman invasion in 190. At the Battle of Magnesia he had 2500 Galatian cavalry and 3000 Galatian infantry, which fought on either side of the phalanx in two groups of 1500. It was clearly possible for him in 190 to recruit a large Galatian force – 5500 men is the largest Galatian force recorded in any Hellenistic army – so their absence in other armies of the king can only be due to his refusal to recruit.

An explanation for this curious abnegation may be in the events of 223–220. In 223 his elder brother Seleukos III was murdered in an officers’ plot while on campaign in Galatia, and one of the murderers was a Galatian called Apatourios. Then in Molon’s rebellion the rebel army included a strong Galatian contingent, whose pressure may well have compelled him to enlist the Rigosages. However well the Rigosages marched for Antiochos in that war – no decisive battle took place, for much of Molon’s army deserted to the king before the fighting began – Antiochos had little reason to trust Galatians as a whole, and the employment of the Rigosages may have been an uncomfortable experience. Only when he suffered from a lack of numbers in his regular forces in 190 did he recruit them again.

This abstention from Galatian recruiting is in strong contrast with their presence in other armies. At Raphia Ptolemy IV had several thousands in his force, brigaded with Thracians (which may be a clue as to where both groups were recruited, though they may also have been Cleruchic forces; that is, Galatians domiciled in Egypt); some of this brigade are said to have been only recently recruited – it was 6000 strong, so we may assume the Galatians numbered about 3000.²⁶ There were Ptolemaic posts on the north Aegean coast, with an appointed governor, who could have acted as their recruiter. This was not, however, an important element in an army of 70,000 men.

Of all the Great Powers of the time, Macedon should perhaps have been the most reluctant to employ Galatians, given its disastrous experience at their hands. Despite Antigonos Gonatas’ success at the start of his reign, when he had recruited Galatians to rid his kingdom of other Galatians, he had experienced troubles later when Pyrrhos’ Galatians had rifled the royal tombs at Aigai, and when the large contingent in his own employ at Megara mutinied and had to be massacred. In addition, the Macedonian kingdom was hardly wealthy in comparison to the Seleukid and the Ptolemaic states, and mercenaries were expensive. On the other hand, the Macedonian population and manpower had been seriously reduced in the preceding century due to the wars and expeditions and invasions, so employing mercenaries was a way of conserving the essential manpower base of Macedonians, and it was they who gave Antigonos his authority.

From the 220s and the new kings who took office in that time – Antiochos III in 223, Ptolemy IV in 222, Philip V in 221, all in their teens when they took power – and once the manpower and stability of the kingdoms could be seen to have recovered, there is a clear indication that employment of Galatians by Ptolemy was increased, but, like the Seleukid kingdom under Antiochos, recruitment by Philip ceased. At the Battle of Sellassia in 222, King Antigonos III Doson, Philip’s uncle and regent, had only 1000 Galatians on the strength.²⁷ Philip did not recruit any at first, but in 218 he did employ some Galatian cavalry (no numbers given) in his war against Sparta.²⁸ In his later wars, however, no Galatians are mentioned, even in 197 when he was desperate for extra numbers of troops to face the Roman attack. On the other hand, in that year he had contacted the Scordiscian state to form an alliance against the Dardani. He had defeated yet another Dardanian invasion, the sixth or seventh of his reign; the Scordiscian alliance would help to deter such attacks from then on, but it does not seem that the alliance allowed Philip to recruit Scordiscian Galatians. This was a version, if one still categorizes all Galatians as chaotic barbarians, of the hiring of tribes; in fact, it was an international agreement of a typical sort, allying with the enemy of one’s enemy.²⁹ Later Philip planned to activate the alliance to destroy the Dardanians completely, but this was prevented by his death.³⁰

Philip’s son and successor as king, Perseus, was similarly strapped for soldiers in his own Roman war, and at the start of the war he had added 13,000 mercenaries to his national army of 30,000 men; of these mercenaries 2000 were Galatians.³¹ At the end of the war, as defeat loomed, Perseus projected a scheme to hire an army of 20,000 Bastarnai, half cavalry, half infantry, under their own king, Klondikos – a hiring of, or an alliance with, a whole community, like Antiochos’ hiring of the Rigosages. The Bastarnai were in all likelihood a Keltic group (some claim them as German) who had been migrating into the Balkans and the Ukraine at the time. In the end Perseus decided he could not afford the cost. He attempted to change the deal to hiring just 5000 cavalry, but the Bastarnai King Klondikos pulled out of the agreement.³² Had Perseus risked hiring the whole force, the Battle of Pydna might have had a different outcome; on the other hand, the Romans were as leery of the Galatians as the Macedonians, and being beaten in battle by a great Macedonian-Bastarnai army might just have so enraged them that they would have put forth an even greater effort to achieve victory. And the prospect of 20,000 Bastarnai – who appear to have been migrating in search of new homes – loose in Macedon was a good reason to pull out of the agreement. Perseus would hardly be popular at home if, having won the Roman war, he found the Bastarnai would not go home, or at least not go away.

The market for Galatian mercenaries changed gradually. From initial enthusiasm in the 270s, the kings became steadily more wary and kept their hirings to only a few thousands – Perseus is said to have been too stingy (or poor) to pay Klondikos, but hiring 20,000 Galatians and admitting them to the kingdom would clearly be both very expensive and dangerous. The subsequent extinction of the Macedonian kingdom in 167 therefore removed one of the major markets for Galatian soldiers. The Seleukids had already lost ready geographical access to Galatia once again in 188, but at his great victory parade at Daphne in 166, Antiochos IV included a division of 5000 Galatian mercenaries.³³ The collapse of the Seleukid state, which followed Antiochos’ defeat in Parthia later, effectively closed that market also, since they were, as Perseus had found, too expensive (a major change from the first hirings, when they were thought to be a cheap alternative to hiring Greeks). The Ptolemies continued to employ them, and the wealth of the dynasty was clearly enough to afford them, but their appearance is so infrequent that one must assume that they were few in number.³⁴

The Pergamene King Attalos I had as much reason as Antiochos III and Ptolemy II to be wary of Galatian mercenaries, but in an emergency he was just as willing to take the risk. In fighting Akhaios in 217 he turned to hiring a whole nation of Galatians, the Aigosages. They came over from Europe, families and all, on a promise of land on which to settle – more evidence of continuing Galatian migrations – but they proved to be both superstitious and unreliable, and were clearly aiming to settle first and fight later, if necessary. Attalos, however, was the one who repudiated the contract, though by the time he did so they were over the Hellespont and in the Troad. They inevitably became a public nuisance to everyone else in the area, until, ironically, it was the Bithynian King Prusias I who attacked and destroyed them – another massacre. One would suppose the survivors – there will have been some – who escaped, moved into Galatia for refuge.³⁵

All the Great Powers were clearly in the market for Galatian recruits at various times, but increasingly only on their own terms. The strictly limited numbers of all those who were employed suggests that great care was being exercised in recruiting them once the habits and behaviour of the Galatians were understood. The single attested case of a whole Galatian nation being employed successfully, in Antiochos III’s fight with Molon (and discounting Nikomedes’ exploit), can be explained as a desperate measure in a time when the available Seleukid manpower was very limited; it was also ended very quickly, since Antiochos did not use them in the fighting against Ptolemy and Akhaios which followed. All other cases were hirings of smallish numbers, in the low thousands, and the men were, again, employed usually for brief periods in times of shortage of military manpower – at Raphia by Ptolemy, at Magnesia by Antiochos, at the start of the Roman war by Perseus. The Galatians were clearly valued as mercenary soldiers, but their presence was hardly welcome and they were kept for most of the time at a distance.