Ancient
Galatia was an area in the highlands of central
Anatolia in modern
Turkey. Galatia, an ancient region of
Asia Minor, was named for the immigrant Gauls from
Thrace (cf.
Tylis), who settled here and became its ruling caste in the
3rd century BC. It has been called the "Gallia" of the East, Roman writers calling its inhabitants
Galli.
[1]Galatia was bounded on the north by Bithynia and Paphlagonia, on the east by Pontus and Cappadocia, on the south by Cilicia and Lycia, and on the west by Phrygia.
The modern capital of Turkey, Ankara (ancient Ancyra), was also the capital of ancient Galatia.
Seeing something of a Hellenized savage in the Galatians, Francis Bacon and other Renaissance writers called them "Gallo-Graeci"—"Gauls settled among the Greeks"—and the country "Gallo-Graecia", as had the 3rd century AD Latin historian Justin [2] The more usual term in Antiquity is ???????a??ta? (Hellenogalatai) of Diodorus Siculus' Biblioteca historica v.32.5, in a passage that is translated "...and were called Gallo-Graeci because of their connection with the Greeks", identifying Galatia in the Greeek East as opposed to Gallia in the West.[3]
