Galatians and Gauls

Many modern authors have committed themselves to another equally sweeping negative — that the title Galatae could not be used to designate the people of Roman Galatia (being confined to those who had the blood-right1 to it). Before making this sweeping assertion, it is clear that the learned writers did not take the trouble to review the passages mentioning the Galatae, or to recall the facts.2 No scholar outside the North Galatian ranks, would even ask for proof that, when the Romans called a Province by a definite name, they summed up the inhabitants of the Province by the ethnic derived from the name That is an axiom from which all historical and archaeological students start. It was necessary in the administration of a Province to have some designation for the whole body of Provincials: Afri, all the people of Africa Provincia, whatever their race; Baetici, of Baetica Hispania; Asiani, of Asia; and Galatae, of Galatia.

A single case is sufficient.3 Tacitus, with his love for varying expression, speaks of dilectus per Galatiam Cappadociamque and Galatarum Cappadocumque auxilia. When this was quoted as an example, the North Galatian champion replied that these troops were obviously recruited among the Gaulish tribes (as the most warlike), and not from the Province as a whole. Once more he spoke without investigating the facts, simply inventing reasons to prop up a theological theory. The evidence has been fully collected and tabulated by Mommsen,4 and it is to the opposite effect. Recruits were drawn from all parts of the Province, and (so far as the evidence reaches) in larger numbers from the parts outside of North Galatia; there were, at least, three auxiliary cohorts styled cohortes Paphlagonum, but no auxiliary cohort takes its name from the North Galatians.5

The details of this argument are here quoted only as an example of the straits to which the North Galatian theory reduces its defenders. They fall into error after error, when they try to support their theory from the facts of Galatian history or antiquities.

[1] Errarunt qui Galatas Pauli intellegi voluerunt Lycaonas, quippe qui a Romanis Galatice provinciae essent attributi; neque enim, ut mittam alia, ea re ex Lycaonibus Galli facti erant (Gal 3:1), says one of the most learned and scholarly supporters of the North Galatian view.

[2] See Sections 8, 9, 12, 13.

[3] Other examples are given in Studia Biblica, IV, p. 26 ff. Dr. Zahn says that the discussion there given handelt hievun ausführlich und überzeugend (Einleitung, p. 130); and Meyer-Sieffert add man wird die Moglichkeit nicht bestreiten können, dass er einen für die Gemeinden von Antiochien, Iconium, Lystra und Derbe bestimmten Brief κλησίαις τῆς Γαλατίας addressirem, und alienfalls auch dieselben als Galater anreden konnte, p. 8. See also “Galatia” in Hastings’ Dict. of the Bible.

[4] Observat. Epigraph., XXXVIII, Militum Provincialium Patriae, p. 190 f (Eph. Epigr., vol. v.), and Hermes, XIX 1 ff.

[5] In the names of auxiliary cohorts, words like Galatarum, Cilicum, must be taken in the sense of nation, not of Province, according to Mommsen’s acute distinction. Auxiliary cohorts were in theory assumed to originate from foreign nations (as in truth they once did originate), not from Roman Provinces; and they bore names national and non-Roman after they were recruited entirely from the Provinces.