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Short description

The Galatian Thorakitai were a powerful shock infantry unit, armed with javelins and swords to cut through every foe in their way.

Description

The Galatian Thorakitai are heavily armoured infantry, recruited from the Galatian tribes that were settled in central Anatolia by Antiochos I. Rather than using Celtic gear, they are equipped with traditionally Greek armour. They wear a muscle cuirass, pteryges, masked Phrygian or Attic helmets, carry two javelins, as well as a short two-edged sword for thrusting and slashing. The only Celtic elements they retain are their large painted thureos shields, that had spread throughout the Hellenic world after the first Celtic invasion into Greece in the 280s BC, as well as a light blue cloak. The Galatian Thorakitai, as heavy shock infantry, are best utilized either as a mobile flanking force or as a shock unit, cutting right through the enemy’s centre with their powerful charge.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The Celtic invasion of Greece in 280 BC had an enormous impact on Hellenic warfare in the 3rd century BC. The adoption of the oval Celtic “thureos” shield and of mail body armour can be seen as the clearest indication of that. The most important new troop types that emerged from this Celtic influence were the thureophoroi (Thureos-shield carriers) and thorakitai (men with body armour and breastplate) who are mentioned by Plutarch and Polybios among the forces of the Seleukids and Achaians (Plut. Phil. 9.2.; 9.5.; Pol. IV.12.3; V.53.8; X.29.6; XI.11.4-5,14.1,15.5). The Celts themselves became an important pool of recruits for the Greeks. After Antigonos II Gonatas (ca. 319-239 BC) had defeated a large Gallic force of 18,000 near Lysimacheia in 277 BC, he recruited them, perhaps as the cheapest mercenaries of that time, into his own army (Iust. 25.2; Polyaen. IV.6.17).

Another Gallic host, commonly called “Galatians” today, made its way into Asia in 278 BC. They were employed in a succession dispute in Bithynia, but later came into conflict with Antiochos I (ca. 324/323-261 BC). After defeating the Galatians in battle around 275 BC with the help of his elephants, the Seleucid king resettled their three tribes, the Tolistobogii, Tectosages, and Trocmi, to central Anatolia (Grainger, The Rise of the Seleukid Empire ( 2014), pp. 139-141). Justin summarizes the situation with the following sentence: “The kings of the east then carried on no wars without a mercenary army of Gauls” (Iust. 25.2).

Though Galatians are often depicted as almost or completely naked, only wearing iconic “Celtic” accessories like blue cloaks and thureoi shields (cf. the terracotta figure of a Gaulish mercenary in the Ptolemaic army; the stele of Nikasion; the funerary stele of the Galatian Bitos), two terracotta figurines of Galatian infantrymen (from Myrina in Asia Minor) have been found that depict, in addition to their light blue cloak, a typically Hellenic panoply. The terracotta’s are preserved in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston [Burr, Myrina 1934, 112] and the Louvre [Cat. II pl. 151b&d]. Both show a Galatian warrior with a Phrygian helmet resting his arm on a large thureos shield, presenting a Greek muscle cuirass with pteryges over a short tunic and under a large cloak. One of them presumably covers his face with a bearded mask, while the other one has a gorgon’s head on his shield, a symbol typically used by Greeks. Both of these statues show that the Galatians not only adapted to the Hellenic environment around them, but were probably outfitted with the finest equipment their employer could produce in order to make them even more effective and sturdy in battle. The terracotta figurines either depict soldiers of the Galatian armies or mercenaries in Seleucid service. Therefore, this unit is available to both factions.