Consul Manlius Vulso marched against the Gauls of Asia Minor

From Rise and Fall of Sagalassos by Marc Waelkens. Archaeology Magazine, May 1995.

...they [the Roman armies] entered the country of the Sagalassians, rich and abounding in all kinds of crops. Pisidians inhabit it, by far the best warriors in this region. This circumstance gave them courage, as well as the fertility of the soil, their large population, and the situation of their fortified town in a land where such strongholds were few. Since no embassy met him at the frontier, the consul [Cn. Manlius Vulso] sent out parties to plunder the fields. Then at last their stubbornness was broken when they saw their property being carried and driven away; sending ambassadors and agreeing to pay 50 talents and 20,000 measures of wheat and as many of barley, they obtained peace. --Livy, History of Rome, 38.16.9

In 189 B.C. Roman armies under the command of Cn. Manlius Vulso marched against the Gauls of Asia Minor. Their journey took them through the territory of the Sagalassians, whose city, Sagalassos, was one of the wealthiest in the region of Pisidia. That the city could pay the vast ransom that Livy reported--nearly one and one-half tons of silver and more than 5,000 tons each of wheat and barley--indicates just how wealthy. During the next few centuries Sagalassos would grow into one of the more prosperous cities in Asia Minor, with a population in the tens of thousands. Located on alpine terraces beneath two mountain peaks known today as the Tekne Tepe and the Cincinkirik Tepe, it was divided into an upper and a lower city, each with an agora surrounded by porticoes and public monuments. There were foundations and temples, theaters and baths, and the mansions of wealthy merchants and landowners. But despite its splendor, Sagalassos is rarely mentioned by Roman historians; it was only one of many provincial cities in a sprawling Empire stretching from the Atlantic to the Euphrates. By the thirteenth century it had disappeared entirely from written records, its ruins and even its name forgotten.

The history of Sagalassos is fascinating. I am reminded of passages in The March of the Ten Thousand by Xenophon from 370 B.C. in which he recounts the Greek mercenary force marching into the heart of the Persian Empire and then back out. Again and again in the text, he refers to cities through which the 10,000 pass - cities no longer extant and indeed no longer known. Occasionally they passed formally inhabited cities which had through circumstance of invasion or drought or civil disturbance become ghost towns.

Sagalassos had that impact on some of the early European travelers.

In 1706 French traveler Paul Lucas visited Sagalassos. He wrote, "One sees several castles of enormous size on the mountain tops. For a length of time I was contemplating wonders which I hardly could believe to exist, I mean complete cities with houses built of the tallest blocks, some of them even made of marble. Although these places were charming and magnificent, there was no trace of any inhabitants, so that they seemed to be the dwelling places of fairies rather than being really existing towns."

Reminds me of some of the passages in Return of the King in which Tolkien describes the decline and abandonment of ancient cites of Gondor such as Osgiliath.

'In the South the realm of Gondor long endured; and for a while its splendour grew, recalling somewhat of the might of Númenor, ere it fell. High towers that people built, and strong places, and havens of many ships; and the winged crown of the Kings of Men was held in awe by folk of many tongues. Their chief city was Osgiliath, Citadel of the Stars, through the midst of which the River flowed. And Minas Ithil they built, Tower of the Rising Moon, eastward upon a shoulder of the Mountains of Shadow; and westward at the feet of the White Mountains Minas Anor they made, Tower of the Setting Sun. There in the courts of the King grew a white tree, from the seed of that tree which Isildur brought over the deep waters, and the seed of that tree before came from Eressla, and before that out of the Uttermost West in the Day before days when the world was young.

'But in the wearing of the swift years of Middle-earth the line of Meneldil son of Anbrion failed, and the Tree withered, and the blood of the Númenoreans became mingled with that of lesser men. Then the watch upon the walls of Mordor slept, and dark things crept back to Gorgoroth. And on a time evil things came forth, and they took Minas Ithil and abode in it, and they made it into a place of dread; and it is called Minas Morgul, the Tower of Sorcery. Then Minas Anor was named anew Minas Tirith, the Tower of Guard; and these two cities were ever at war, but Osgiliath which lay between was deserted and in its ruins shadows walked.

But what caught my eye in the original passage was "Cn. Manlius Vulso marched against the Gauls of Asia Minor." Gauls in Asia Minor? I think of them as in modern day France and in Northern Italy. But sure enough, they did get down into the Balkans and even into Anatolia. The territory in which they settled in the third century B.C. was called Gallatia, in the north central part of Anatolia.

The Galatians originated as a part of the great Celtic migration, which invaded Macedon, led by Brennus. The original Celts who settled in Galatia came through Thrace under the leadership of Leotarios and Leonnorios c. 278/277 BC. These Celts consisted of three tribes, the Tectosages, the Trocmii, and the Tolistobogii.

Brennus invaded Greece in 281 BC with a huge war band, but was turned back before he could plunder the temple of Apollo at Delphi. At the same time, another Gaulish group of men, women, and children was migrating through Thrace. This had split off from Brennus' people in 279 BC, and had migrated into Thrace under its leaders Leonnorius and Lutarius. These invaders appeared in Asia Minor in 278–277 BC; others invaded Macedonia and killed the Ptolemaic ruler Ptolemy Ceraunus, but were eventually ousted by Antigonus Gonatas, the grandson of the defeated Diadoch Antigonus the One-Eyed.

The invaders came at the invitation of Nicomedes I of Bithynia, who wanted their help in a dynastic struggle against his brother. Three tribes crossed over from Thrace to Asia Minor. They numbered about 10,000 fighting men and about the same number of women and children, divided into three tribes, Trocmi, Tolistobogii and Tectosages. They were eventually defeated by the Seleucid king Antiochus I, in a battle where the Seleucid war elephants shocked the Celts. While the momentum of the invasion was broken, the Galatians were by no means exterminated.

Instead, the migration led to the establishment of a long-lived Celtic territory in central Anatolia, which included the eastern part of ancient Phrygia, a territory that became known as Galatia. There they ultimately settled, and strengthened by fresh accessions of the same clan from Europe, they overran Bithynia and supported themselves by plundering neighbouring countries. The Gauls invaded eastern Phrygia on at least one occasion.