Galatia

Galatia (; Ancient Greek: Γαλατία, Galatía, Turkish: Galatya), also called Gallograikia (Ancient Greek: Γαλλογραικία), was an ancient area in the highlands of central Anatolia, roughly corresponding to the provinces of Ankara and Eskişehir in modern Turkey. Galatia was named after the Gauls from Thrace (cf. Tylis), who settled here and became a small transient foreign tribe in the 3rd century BC, following the Gallic invasion of the Balkans in 279 BC.

Original Chorography

Galatia's boundaries as understand in its heyday included Bithynia and Paphlagonia to the north, Pontus and Cappadocia to the east, Cilicia and Lycaonia to the south, and Phrygia to the west. Its capital was Ancyra, closely corresponding to Ankara, the modern-day capital of Turkey.

Celtic Galatia

The terms "Galatians" came to be used by the Greeks for the three Celtic peoples of Anatolia: the Tectosages, the Trocmii, and the Tolistobogii. By the 1st century BC, the Celts had become so Hellenized that some Greek writers called them Hellenogalatai (Ἑλληνογαλάται). The Romans called them Gallograeci. Though the Celts had, to a large extent, integrated into Hellenistic Asia Minor, they preserved their linguistic and ethnic identity.

By the 4th century BC, the Celts had penetrated into the Balkans, coming into contact with the Thracians and Greeks. In 380 BC, they fought in the southern regions of Dalmatia (present day Croatia), and rumors circulated around the ancient world that Alexander the Great's father, Philip II of Macedonia had been assassinated by someone using a dagger of Celtic origins.