Unit Browser for RTR: Imperium Surrectum

Short description

Extremely hardy and vicious spearmen.

Description

These Celts were warriors, respected by all major powers of the Mediterranean. They hired themselves out as mercenaries, sometimes fighting on both sides in the great battles of the times. For years the chieftains and their followers ravaged the western half of Asia Minor, as allies of one or another of the warring princes. Without any serious opposition, they sided with the renegade Seleucid prince Antiochus Hierax, in his attempt to defeat king Attalus I of Pergamon (241-197 BC). Instead, the Hellenised cities united under his banner, and Attalus inflicted several severe defeats upon the Galatians. Around 232 BC they were forced to settle permanently and to confine themselves in the region to which they had already given their name.

In the early 2nd century BC they proved terrible allies of Antiochus the Great, the last Seleucid king trying to regain control over Asia Minor, but after the defeat of this Seleucid king by the Romans, Rome at last proved a worthy protection against them.

In 189 BC Rome sent Gnaeus Manlius Vulso on an expedition against the Galatians. He defeated them and Galatia was henceforth dominated by Rome through regional rulers from 189 BC onward. Galatia declined and fell at times under Pontic ascendancy and was finally freed by the Mithridatic Wars, during which they supported Rome. In the settlement of 64 BC Galatia became a client state of the Roman Empire, the old constitution disappeared, and three chiefs were appointed, one for each tribe, (Tectosages, Tolistobogii and Trocmi). But this arrangement soon gave way before the ambition of one of these chiefs, Deiotarus, the contemporary of Cicero and Julius Caesar, who made himself master of the other two and was finally recognised by the Romans as 'king' of Galatia.