THE GALATIAN PEOPLE.

tians an alien race.

HEN St Paul carried the Gospel into Galatia, he was The Gala

thrown for the first time among an alien people differing widely in character and habits from the surrounding nations. A race whose home was in the far West, they had been torn from their parent rock by some great social convulsion, and after drifting over wide tracts of country, had settled down at length on a strange soil in the very heart of Asia Minor. Without attempting here to establish the Celtic affinities of this boulder people by the fossil remains of its language and institutions, or to trace the path of its migration by the scores imprinted on its passage across the continent of Europe, it will yet be useful, by way of introduction to St Paul's Epistle, to sketch as briefly as possible its previous history and actual condition. There is a certain distinctness of feature in the portrait which the Apostle has left of his Galatian converts. It is clear at once that he is dealing with a type of character strongly contrasted for instance with the vicious refinements of the dissolute and polished Corinthians, perhaps the truest surviving representatives of ancient Greece, or again with the dreamy speculative mysticism which disfigured the halforiental Churches of Ephesus and Colossæ. We may expect to have light thrown upon the broad features of national character which thus confront us, by the circumstances of the descent and previous history of the race, while at the same time such a sketch will prepare the way for the solution

9

names

of some questions of interest, which start up in connexion with

this epistle. The

The great subdivision of the human family which at the

dawn of European history occupied a large portion of the Celtæ, Ga. latæ, and continent west of the Rhine with the outlying islands, and Galli,

which modern philologers have agreed to call Celtic, was known to the classical writers of antiquity by three several names, Celtoe, Galatoe, and Galli? Of these, Celtoe, which is the most ancient, being found in the earliest Greek historians Hecatæus and Herodotus”, was probably introduced into the Greek language by the colonists of Marseilles', who were first brought in contact with this race. The term Galatoe is of late introduction, occurring first in Timæus, a writer of the third century B.C.

This latter form was generally adopted by the Greeks when their knowledge was extended by more direct and frequent intercourse with these barbarians, whether in their earlier home in the West or in their later settlement in Asia Minor. Either it was intended as a more exact representation of the same barbarian sound, or, as seems more probable, the two are diverging but closely allied forms of the same word, derived by the Greeks from different branches of the Celtic race with which at different times they came in contact. On the other hand, the Romans generally designated

1 On these terms see Diefenbach Celtica II. p. 6 sq., Ukert Geogr. der Griech. u. Röm. Th. 11. Abth. 2, P. 183 8q., Zeuss die Deutschen u. die Nachbarstämme p. 6 sq., Thierry Histoire des Gaulois 1. p. 28.

Hecat. Fragm. 19, 21, 22, ed. Mül. ler ; Herod. ü. 33, iv. 49. Both forms Κελτοι and Κέλται occur. .

8 Diod. v. 32, quoted in note 5.

• Timæus Fragm. 37, ed. Müller. Pausanias says (i. 3. 5) byè dé TOTE aúτους καλείσθαι Γαλάτας εξενίκησε: Κελ. τοί γάρ κατά τε σφάς το αρχαίον και ταρά τοις άλλοις ωνομάζοντο. See also the passages in Diefenbach Celt. II, p. 8.

5 This seems the most probable in.

ference from the confused notices in ancient writers. The most important passage is Diod. v. 32, Tous gdp útèp Μασσαλίαν κατοικούντας εν τω μεσογείω και τους παρά τας 'Αλπεις έτι δε τους επί τάδε των Πυρηναίων καιρών Κελτους ονομάζουσι τους δ' υπέρ ταύτης της Κελτικής εις τα προς νότον νεύοντα μέρη, , παρά τε τον ωκεανών και το Ερκύνιον όρος καθιδρυμένους και πάντας τους εξής μέχρι της Σκυθίας, Γαλάτας προσαγορεύουσι K.T... See also Strabo iv. p. 189, and other passages cited in Ukert 11. 2, p. 197 sq., Diefenbach Celt. II. p. 10 sq. At all events it seems certain that the Gauls in the neighbourhood of Mar. seilles called themselves Celtæ.

this people Galli. Whether this word exhibits the same root as Celtæ and Galatæ, omitting however the Celtic suffix', or whether some other account of its origin is more probable, it is needless to enquire. The term Galli is sometimes adopted Usage of

Greek and by later Greek writers, but, as a general rule, until some time Roman after the Christian era they prefer Galatæ, whether speaking writers. of the people of Gaul properly so called or of the Asiatic colony'. The Romans in turn sometimes borrow Galatæ from

the Greeks, but when they do so it is applied exclusively to the Celts of Asia Minor, that is, to the Galatians in the modern sense of the term. The word Celtæ still remains in common use side by side with the Galatæ of the Greek and Galli of the Roman writers, being employed in some cases as coextensive with these, and in others to denote a particular branch of the

Celtic race'. Celtic mi

The rare and fitful glimpses which we obtain of the Celtic grations.

peoples in the early twilight of history reveal the same restless,
fickle temperament, so familiar to us in St Paul's epistle. They
appear in a ferment of busy turmoil and ceaseless migration”.
They are already in possession of considerable tracts of country
to the south and east of their proper limits. They have over-
flowed the barrier of the Alps and poured into Northern Italy.
They have crossed the Rhine and established themselves here
and there in that vague and ill-defined region known to the
ancients as the Hercynian forest and on the banks of the
Danube. It is possible that some of these were fragments
sundered from the original mass of the Celtic people, and
dropped on the way as they migrated westward from the
common home of the Aryan races in central Asia : but more
probable and more in accordance with tradition is the view that
their course being obstructed by the ocean, they had retraced
their steps and turned towards the East again. At all events,
See similar notices in Strabo iv. p. 195, e.g. in Cæsar Bell. Gall. i. 1. See
Appian Bell. Hisp. § 1. The form l'a- on the main subject of the preceding
λατία of European Gaul still continued paragraph a good paper by M. D'Arbois
to be used occasionally, when ralla de Jubainville, Les Celles, Les Galates,
had usurped its place. It is found for Les Gaulois, from the Revue Archéo-
instance in Julian Epist. lxxiii, and in logique, Paris 1875.
Libanius frequently: comp. Cureton 2 For the migrations of the Celts see
Corp. Ign.p.351. Ammianus (xv.9) can the well-known work of Thierry Histoire
still say, 'Galatas dictos, ita enim Gal. des Gaulois (4th ed. 1857), or Contzen
los sermo Graecus appellat.' Even later Wanderungen der Kelten (Leipz. 1861).
writers, who use Talllar of the Roman They are considered more in their philo-
provinces of Gaul, nevertheless seem to logical aspect in Diefenbach's Celtica,
prefer ralarla when speaking of the and in Prichard's Celtic Nations edited
western country as a whole, e.g. Ioann. by Latham. The article "Galli' by
Lydus Ostent. pp. 52, 54 (Wachsmuth), Baumstark in Pauly's Real-Encyclopä-
Hierocl. Synecd. app. p. 313 (Parthey). die is a careful abstract of all that

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