Galatian Phalanx?

[eques]

In Patrick's magisterial survey of elephants (Slingshot 319), he quotes a passage from Lucian on the Elephant Victory, which describes the Galatians armed and fighting as Hellenistics in pretty much every detail, (Phalanxes, Armour, Ranks, Scythed Chariots), and this was only 2 years after the Galatians invaded Asia.

Do not most rulesets portray the Galatians throughout their history as essentially Ancient Britons, with warband, celtic chariots etc?

[Duncan Head]

Yes, most rules do. Because Livy's account of the Roman campaigns in Galatia in 189 BC, long after the "elephant victory", portrays them still as naked warbands. As do various Pergamene celebratory sculptures, and their Roman copies. Don't put too much emphasis on the word "phalanx", it can be used to mean no more than a close-order mass - Caesar uses the word of the Helvetii, Celts far removed from Hellenistic influences. The scythed chariots are never mentioned again after the Elephant battle, so if they existed were presumably a short-term adoption.

[Patrick Waterson]

Indeed.  The Galatians were also equipped by Nicomedes I of Bithynia, who (rather like Alexius I and the First Crusade) encouraged the new arrivals to go forth and fight anyone except himself, and particularly his broither and rival Zipoetes and his enemy Antiochus I.  Unlike Alexius, he appears also to have handed over a fair amount of equipment, although this in itself would not per se suddenly turn the Galatians into a Hellenistic army.

As Duncan says, 'phalanx' is often used by period authors just to mean a mass of heavy infantry.  The equipment acquired from the Bithynians and from any previous successes against the Seleucids was probably abandoned on the battlefield and never replaced, as Duncan indicates.

[Duncan Head]

Indeed.  The Galatians were also equipped by Nicomedes I of Bithynia, who (rather like Alexius I and the First Crusade) encouraged the new arrivals to go forth and fight anyone except himself, and particularly his broither and rival Zipoetes and his enemy Antiochus I.  Unlike Alexius, he appears also to have handed over a fair amount of equipment, although this in itself would not per se suddenly turn the Galatians into a Hellenistic army.

It's Memnon of Heracleia who tells us about Nicomedes arming the Galatians, which ties up with Livy's remark (38.16) that half the men who crossed to Asia were unarmed. One is inclined to wonder where Nicomedes got the equipment from, especially the bronze armour that the front ranks were (according to Lucian) wearing at the Elephant battle. The Bithynians seem to have gone from the traditional Thracian peltast that we still see in Xenophon's day to the Hellenistic thureophoroi seen in 2nd-century Bithynian art, neither type requiring much body-armour. Maybe Nic had a store of trophies from previous victories over Hellenistic generals?

Oh, when I agreed that:

... most rulesets portray the Galatians throughout their history as essentially Ancient Britons, with warband, celtic chariots etc?

I should have noted that this is true only up to the reign of Deiotarus, who raised infantry equipped in the Roman style - he assisted Cicero in Cilicia with 30 cohorts in 51 BC, their descendants eventually becoming Legio XXII Deiotariana.