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1
Author Manuscript of “Beating the Galatians: Ideologies, Analogies and Allegories in
Hellenistic Literature and Art”, in A. Coşkun (ed.) (2022) Galatian Victories and Other
Studies into the Agency and Identity of the Galatians in the Hellenistic and Early Roman
Periods. Colloquia Antiqua 33. Leuven (Peeters): 97–144. Please do get in touch if you’d like
an offprint of the published version.
BEATING THE GALATIANS: IDEOLOGIES, ANALOGIES AND ALLEGORIES IN HELLENISTIC
LITERATURE AND ART*
THOMAS J. NELSON
Abstract
Hellenistic literature and art commemorated victories over the Galatians through a variety of
analogies and allegories, ranging from the historical Persian Wars to the cosmic
Gigantomachy: each individual victory was incorporated into a larger sequence in which
order constantly quelled the forces of chaos. This paper explores this analogical phenomenon
by setting it within a larger Hellenistic context. The first section analyses the various
analogies and allegories employed by the Aitolians, Ptolemies and Attalids, comparing these
with their 5th-century Athenian precedent and reassessing the case for a Galatian allegory in
the Pergamene Great Altar’s Gigantomachy frieze; the second examines how Kallimachos
manipulated the common Greek-barbarian antithesis with possible intercultural and
metapoetic elements; and the third asks how Seleukid ideology relates to this larger pattern,
focusing on Lukian’s account of Antiochos’ ‘Elephant Victory’ (Zeuxis 8–11). Although
Lukian’s account probably derives from a prose source and not directly from Simonides of
Magnesia’s court epic on the subject, I contend that the Syrian writer is likely indebted to the
Seleukids’ own self-presentation in portraying Antiochos as the heir of the Achaimenids
through a distinctly orientalising motif: the deployment of an exotic secret weapon. The
Greek-barbarian dichotomy so prominent elsewhere thus collapses: the Seleukid king was
depicted as the ideal blend of East and West, a worthy successor of Alexander the Great.
The Galatians left an indelible mark on the cultural memory of Hellenistic Greece.
1
During
the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC, a vast output of literature and sculpture commemorated
numerous victories over the marauding barbarians, assimilating these events of the recent
* I would like to thank audiences in Waterloo, Oxford and Cambridge for their helpful comments
on various parts of this paper, as well as those who have read and commented upon earlier drafts,
including Altay Coşkun, Caitlin Duschenes, Richard Hunter, Marijn Visscher, Tim Whitmarsh, Alan
Woolley and, above all, Gregory Hutchinson, who supervised the dissertation from which this paper
emerged. The project was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
1
For accounts of the Galatians’ invasion of or migration to Asia Minor and the ensuing
propaganda, see Nachtergael 1977, 1–205; Mitchell 1993, 13–26; Hannestad 1993; Schmidt-Dounas
2000, 293–312; Barbantani 2001, 188–223; Strootman 2005; Koehn 2007, 88–129. On issues of
nomenclature, see Strobel 1996, 123–35. For further discussion and references, see Coşkun (Chapter
1), Burghart (chapter 3) and Kosmetatou (chapter 4) in this volume. For clarity, I refer to these Celtic
invaders throughout as ‘Galatians’ to avoid any artificial divide between those of the East and the
West.
2
past into pre-existing historical and mythological traditions.
2
Just as the Athenians had
integrated their 5th-century victory over the Persians into a larger mythological nexus
stretching back to the Trojan War, so too did the collective Hellenistic world – kings and
cities alike – frame their victories over the Galatians as the latest chapter in the monumental
narrative of Greek victory over the barbarian ‘outsider’. By thus aligning their successes with
the celebrated achievements of 5th-century Athens, parvenu Hellenistic powers confirmed
their Greekness and legitimacy.
This equation of the Persian and Galatian Wars has become a commonplace in modern
scholarship,
3
reflecting a broader interest in the representation of these Hellenistic
‘barbarians’,
4
and in the concept of identity and alterity in antiquity.
5
Yet few studies have
gone beyond this basic parallel to explore in depth the complex array of analogies and
allegories employed in the commemorative literature and art of the period. This is perhaps
understandable, given that many works celebrating these achievements survive today only in
fragments, copies or second-hand accounts. Nevertheless, from what survives, it is still
possible to examine further the parallels that were employed to represent both the victors and
the vanquished.
In this paper, I shall explore how this analogical drive manifests itself in different
media and in different places throughout the Hellenistic world. We shall begin with the
frequent assimilation of the Galatians to the Persians of history and the Giants of myth,
comparing this phenomenon with earlier Athenian precedent. We shall then turn to
Alexandrian poetry and examine how Kallimachos manipulated the common division with
possible intercultural and metapoetic elements. And we shall close by asking how the
ideology of the Seleukid kingdom relates to the larger patterns that we have traced. The
result, I hope, will be a richer picture of the range of ways in which Hellenistic authors and
artists exploited the analogical potential of the Galatians.
COSMOS AND CHAOS
2
Little literary commemoration is extant; see Barbantani 2001, 181–88. For the Galatians in art,
see Bienkowski 1908; 1928; Marszal 2000; Cain 2006; Kistler 2009; Coşkun 2014; Queyrel 2016,
193–233.
3
For example, Mitchell 2003, 287.
4
Strobel 1994; Kremer 1994; Mitchell 2003; Kistler 2009; Rausch 2013; Lampinen 2013; 2014;
Baray 2017. All of these studies emphasise the distortion of historical reality in Graeco-Roman
representations of the Galatians. Cf. Cassibry 2017 on the lingering effects of this distortion.
5
Hall 1989; Cohen 2000; T. Harrison 2002; Cartledge 2002; Isaac 2004; Gruen 2011a; 2011b;
Vlassopoulos 2013.
3
Throughout the Hellenistic period, individual defeats of the Galatians were incorporated into
a larger mythico-historical tradition, celebrating the continual triumph of civilisation over
chaos. An early example of this phenomenon is a stele relief from Kyzikos (Fig. 1), which
commemorates the city’s victory over the barbarians around 277/6 BC. It depicts Herakles
slaying a Galatian, identified as such by his oblong shield and sword scabbard. The
composition of the scene, however, iconographically parallels Herakles’ mythical conflict
with the Hydra,
6
while the local setting may also recall Herakles’ earlier battle with Giants at
the city’s harbour, Chytos (Apollonios Rhodios Argonautika 1. 989–1011). Through such
echoes, the relief aligns Kyzikos’ defeat of the barbarians with the hero’s past civilising
exploits: distant myth and recent history are blurred into one.
The clearest example of this analogical tendency, however, is the Attalid dedication on
the Athenian Acropolis, probably dedicated by Attalos I around 200 BC, which included four
vignettes: the Gods’ defeat of the Giants, the Athenians’ victory over the Amazons, the defeat
of the Persians at Marathon and the Attalids’ triumph over the Galatians at Myrina (Pausanias
1. 25. 2).
7
The original monument does not survive, but Pausanias’ description indicates that
it presented Attalos’ Galatian victory as the latest example of civilisation’s victory over
chaos. Indeed, Stewart’s study of the Roman replicas highlights the numerous cross-
references between the vignettes, which reinforced this sense of continuity from the age of
myth to the recent past, as well as the various allusions to the Parthenon, which created a
‘Pergamene-Periklean alliance across time and space’.
8
The dedication thus presented
Pergamon as the new Athens and the Attalids as the latest vanquishers of discord.
Athenian Precedent
Attalos’ dedication clearly followed local Athenian idiom, echoing the use of analogies in
literary and artistic commemorations of the Persian Wars.
9
Polygnotus’ mural in the Stoa
Poikile, for example, juxtaposed the victory at Marathon with Theseus’ and Herakles’ defeats
of the Trojans and Amazons (Pausanias 1. 15. 3), while the Parthenon’s reliefs portrayed
scenes from the Trojan War alongside struggles with Giants, Amazons and Centaurs. The
juxtaposition of such episodes implies their equation as part of an ongoing clash between
6
Hannestad 1993, 21. Compare, for example, Boardman et al. 1990, nos. 2009, 2058, 2076.
7
See especially Stewart 2004, 181–236; Osborne 2017. Some prefer an attribution to Attalos II:
see Hansen 1971, 311–14 and the further bibliography amassed in Habicht 1990, 563, n. 9.
8
Stewart 2004, 200; cf. Schmidt-Dounas 2000, 232–44.
9
For these commemorations, see Castriota 1992.
4
order and chaos, an equation made all the more emphatic in 334 BC, when Persian shields
from Alexander the Great’s victory at the Battle of the Granikos were hung on the
Parthenon’s eastern architrave, directly under the Gigantomachy metopes.
10
Indeed, the significance of these mythical comparanda was so great that even their
individual appearances could implicitly recall the events of recent history. The
Amazonomachy on metopes of the Athenian treasury at Delphi, for example, has been
interpreted as an analogy for the victory over Persia, since it was dedicated from Marathonian
spoils (FD III.2 1; Pausanias 10. 11. 5) and depicted Amazons in Persian attire.
11
Pheidias’
Athena Parthenos, meanwhile, was decorated with numerous symbolic images, including an
Amazonomachy on her shield’s exterior, a Gigantomachy on its interior, and a
Centauromachy on her sandals’ soles, echoing the analogies of the Parthenon reliefs (Pliny
Natural History 36. 18). As Evelyn Harrison has suggested, various elements of the shield’s
Amazonomachy may even have alluded to specific episodes from the Persian Wars, including
Marathon and the sack of Athens, a possibility which further demonstrates the myth’s
analogical potential.
12
Classical literature also displays this pattern, although with greater emphasis given to
the Trojan War parallel, reflecting the literary dominance of Homeric epic.
13
A prime
example outside Athens is Simonides of Keos’ elegiac commemoration of the Battle of
Plataia, which treats the Homeric Achilles as a model for the victorious Greeks, and equates
Simonides with Homer as a bestower of everlasting κλέος (‘glory’, fr. 11. 15, 28 ed. West).
14
Yet the same phenomenon is also visible within an Athenian context: in three herm
inscriptions, Kimon’s defeat of the Persians at Eion in 475 BC is compared to the Athenians’
exploits at Troy under Menestheus (‘Simonides’ Epigram 40 FGE [839–52], cf. Iliad 2. 546–
56),
15
while Aischylos’ now-fragmentary Memnon apparently went even further in rewriting
one aspect of the Trojan War to accentuate the parallel. The Athenian tragic playwright
presented the traditionally Ethiopian hero and Trojan ally Memnon as a resident of Persian
Susa and his mother Dawn as a native Kissian (fr. 405 TrGF = Strabo 15. 3. 2; Pausanias 10.
10
Literary evidence only claims that Alexander sent 300 Persian shields (Plutarch Alexander 16.
17–18) or panoplies (Arrian 1. 16. 7) to Athens, but this has been connected with the archaeological
traces of shields visible on the Parthenon: see G. Stevens 1940, 64–66; Hurwit 1999, 253–54.
11
See Devambez 1976, 273; Gauer 1980; Neer 2004, 77. For the increasing presentation of
Amazons in ‘Persising’ dress after Xerxes’ invasion, see Miller 1997, 171 with n. 132.
12
E. Harrison 1981.
13
Cf. Erskine 2001, 61–92.
14
Kowerski 2005, 96–106; Rawles 2018, 77–106.
15
Boedeker 2001, 126; Shapiro 2012, 162–69.
5
31. 7). Achilles’ defeat of the warrior thus became a direct foreshadowing of the Persian
Wars, projecting the clash of Greece and Persia back into the mythical past.
16
Nor was such a mapping of the two wars restricted to poetry; it also underlies
Herodotos’ Histories. His opening chapters present the Persian Wars as the latest in a series
of clashes between the East and West over women (including Helen of Troy), while
Artayctes’ plundering of Protesilaus’ house is perceived as due punishment for Protesilaus’
invasion of Asia (Herodotos 9. 116. 3).
17
Given this string of examples, it is also likely that
other treatments of the Persian Wars no longer extant would have contained still more
analogies, such as Choirilos’ hexametric Persika (SH 314–23), Empedokles’ treatment of
Xerxes’ invasion (mentioned by Diogenes Laertios 8. 57), and Pindar’s dithyrambic
celebration of Athens’s victory at Artemision (fr. 76–77 edd. Snell and Maehler).
These comparisons thus emphasised the significance of the Persian Wars, placing them
on a par with the great conflicts of the mythical past. In both the art and literature of the 5th
century, the Persians were implicitly connected with the Amazons, Centaurs, Trojans and
Giants and their defeat was memorialised as the latest instance of civilisation’s victory over
chaos. When set against this background, Attalos I’s dedication on the Athenian Acropolis
makes perfect sense.
Hellenistic Developments
However, Attalos’ dedication also fits into a broader Hellenistic context. After Alexander the
Great’s invasion of Persia, the juxtaposition of past and present became even more
prominent, with the Persian Wars themselves often forming the vehicle of comparisons.
18
An
epitaph for an Athenian killed at Salamis in the 240s BC, for example, compares the deceased
to those who fought the Persians in the 5th century, drawing a clear link between past and
present (IG II.3.22 11960). The Hellenistic kingdoms, meanwhile, were also increasingly
perceived as equivalents of the Achaimenid empire: the Athenians equated the Macedonian
Antigonos Gonatas to the former Persian threat in the Chremonidean decree (IG II.1.12 687.
7–13), while Lysimachos was presented as a new Xerxes in his attack on the Thracian
Dromichaites (Diodoros 21. 12).
19
The Romans too could be compared with Persian
16
Sommerstein 2008, 128–31. Cf. Robert 1923, 1183: ‘So war die Handlung zugleich ein
mythisches Spiegelbild der Schlacht von Marathon.’
17
Boedeker 1988, 42–43.
18
Cf. Priestley 2014, 157–86: ‘The Persian Wars: New Versions and New Contexts’.
19
Cf. Tuplin 2014, 246–47.
6
precedent, such as in Alkaios of Messene’s contrast of Xerxes and the general T. Flamininus
(Epigram 5 HE [34–37] = Palatine Anthology 16. 5).
20
The most prominent victims of this
analogical rhetoric, however, were the Seleukids, unsurprisingly given their geographical
overlap with the former Achaimenid empire. They were equated with the Persians not only in
Ptolemaic epigraphy (such as the Adulis Inscription and Kanopos Decree),
21
but also in
Rhodian and Roman polemic.
22
Attalos’ analogies, therefore, did not just follow local Athenian traditions, but also
participated in a broader, international idiom that stretched across the Hellenistic world.
Indeed, other commemorations of victories over the Galatians provide ample evidence that
the parallels he used were common in celebratory propaganda. The Amazonomachy,
admittedly, was little used; the only other hint of its appearance is Stewart’s suggestion that a
lost Pergamene source presented the Kaikos river as the limit of the Amazonian queen
Myrina’s campaign to parallel Attalos I’s defeat of the Galatians at the very same river (cf.
Diodoros 3. 55. 5).
23
But for Attalos’ two other analogies, the Persianomachy and
Gigantomachy, there are many comparative examples. Let us examine each of these in turn.
Persian Wars
The comparison of the Persian and Galatian Wars was a familiar topos by the end of the 3rd
century. To commemorate their victory over Brennos’ attack on Delphi in 279/8 BC, the
Aitolians placed Gallic shields in the metopes of the west and south sides of Apollo’s Pythian
temple to complement the Persian shields fixed to the east and north sides after Marathon,
equating their achievements with the Athenians’ previous success (Pausanias 10. 19. 4).
24
Similarly, the tales of supernatural weather and divine intervention associated with the
Delphic victory (Pausanias 10. 23. 1–9; Justin 24. 8. 3–7) recalled Apollo’s legendary
20
See too Almagor 2019, 105–18. The connection between Rome and Persia was later reflected in
the terms used to describe Roman offices: for example, Dio Chrysostom’s talk of Roman ‘satraps’ and
‘kings’ (7. 66); cf. Philostratos Lives of the Sophists 1. 22. 3 (524), 2. 11. 2 (592); Mason 1974, 83.
21
Funk 1996. Brumbaugh (2016) and Visscher (2017; 2020, 136–53) also identify an anti-
Seleukid strain in Alexandrian poetry, foreshadowed by Strootman (2010, 35–36). Cf. Kosmin 2014a,
317, n. 32.
22
See Russo 2013; 2014; Barbantani 2014, 37, n. 58; Almagor 2019, especially 90–94; cf. Florus
Epitome 1. 24. 13: in Antiocho vicimus Xerxen. Both Republican and Augustan Rome also used the
Persian War analogy more widely to characterise their wars with the Carthaginians, Parthians and
others: see Russo 2010; 2018; Spawforth 2012, 103–41; Bridges 2015, 160–62; Giusti 2018,
especially 88–147.
23
Stewart 2004, 234 with n. 214.
24
Amandry 1978.
7
defence of his shrine against Xerxes (Herodotos 8. 35–39).
25
The same parallel also appears
implicitly in two Athenian paeans to Apollo inscribed at Delphi for the Pythais festival, a
ceremony inaugurated after the Battle of Plataia (CA, pp. 141–59). These do not mention the
Persian Wars explicitly, but both refer to the defeat of Brennos’ invasion, implying a
connection between Plataia and the events of 279/8 BC.
26
Although the two paeans are dated
to the 2nd century (138 and 128 BC), their similar structure and language suggest that they
are variations of a traditional Athenian ‘national paean’, of which the implicit Persian-
Galatian comparison may well have been a long-standing set theme.
27
Yet it was not only events at Delphi which were associated with the Persian Wars.
Antigonos Gonatas’ own victory over the Galatians near Lysimacheia in 277 BC was also
celebrated with the same analogy: the king’s association with Pan through his coinage and
Aratos’ hymn to the god (SH 115) has been interpreted as a pointed echo of Pan’s
involvement before the Athenians’ victory at Marathon (Herodotos 6. 105),
28
while the stele
celebrating his victory seems to have been strategically located in the temple of Athena Nike
on the Athenian Acropolis to resonate with material commemorating earlier victories over the
Persians.
29
More explicitly, meanwhile, the Galatians are directly compared with the Persians
in an elegiac papyrus fragment dated to the 3rd or 2nd century BC, a poem which in all
likelihood celebrated a Ptolemaic victory over the barbarians (SH 958. 13–17):
30
The impetuous Galatian man does not certainly | [follow a way of life similar] to the
rich Medes; | for he does not recline in purple garments, nor does he ... , | anointing his
delicate skin with unguents, | but rests on the ground and lives in the open [all year
round].
31
Although the ‘Medes’ here might be another slighting reference to the Seleukids, I follow
Barbantani in seeing a reference to the Persians defeated by Alexander, which would also
25
For these supernatural events, see Parke and Wormell 1956 I, 255–59; Champion 1995, 214–
17.
26
Furley and Bremer 2001 I, 129–38; II, 84–100; see especially I, 132: the defeat of the Galatians
‘perhaps perceived as analogous to the defeat of the Persians’.
27
Thus Furley and Bremer 2001 I, 130–31.
28
Usener 1874, 43–47.
29
Schmidt-Dounas 2000, 311.
30
See Barbantani 2001 for supplements and commentary; and also Barbantani 2002–03, 36–39
for a summary of her arguments for the Ptolemaic connection.
31
Trans. Barbantani 2014, 23.
8
recall the Persian Wars of the 5th century, the pretext of Alexander’s invasion.
32
Notably, the
Medes here offer not so much a parallel as a contrast to the Galatians, yet this fits the king’s
rhetoric, diminishing the Galatians’ apparent threat: he has already defeated ‘others who are
more courageous’ (καὶ ἀρεί[ονας ἄλλους], SH 958. 11). Nevertheless, the lines still
demonstrate that the Persians and Galatians were closely connected in thought, and this is
even clearer in the vocabulary used to describe the Galatians: just like the Persians, they are
‘hybristic and mindless’ (ὑβρισταί τε καὶ ἄφρονες, SH 958. 9).
33
This comparison with the Persian Wars permeated the Greeks’ collective cultural
memory to such an extent that later historians often mentioned the battles against the Persians
and Galatians together as if they were a single concept (Polybios 2. 35; Plutarch Cimon 1. 1).
Pausanias also exploits the parallel in his Periegesis, making a number of explicit
comparisons between the Persians and Galatians, as in the appearance of their shields (10. 19.
4) and their battle tactics (the Galatian trimarkisia resembling the Persian ‘Immortals’, 10. 19.
11). He also models his account of the Galatian conflicts at Thermopylai and Delphi on
Herodotos’ narrative of the Persian invasion.
34
By the later 3rd century, therefore, a clear tradition had developed equating the Persian
and Galatian Wars, to which Attalos I, like later historians, could both appeal and contribute.
Indeed, Attalos’ Athenian dedication offers us the most elaborate example of the parallel.
Strikingly, however, this recurrent comparison tends to skate over the significant differences
between the eastern Persians, often regarded as effeminate and luxurious, and the north-
western Galatians, figures known for their reckless ferocity.
35
Ethnographical reality was
downplayed for the sake of rhetorical synkrisis.
Gigantomachy
Attalos’ final parallel of the Galatians and Giants was highly effective. Not only were the
Giants θεομάχοι (cf. Xenophanes fr. 1. 21–22 ed. West) and ὑβρισταί τε καὶ ἄγριοι (‘hybristic
and savage’, Apollonios Rhodios Argonautika 1. 942), just like the sacrilegious Galatians, but
32
Barbantani 2001, 162–76; 2002–03, 44.
33
Hybristic Persians: Theognis 775; Herodotos 1. 89; Aischylos Persians 821. Mindless Persians:
Philip Epigram 57. 1 GPh [3015] = Palatine Anthology 9. 708. 1. Cf. Kallimachos Aitia fr. 114. 7 ed.
Harder, where the ἄφρονας ὑβρ[ are also foes of Apollo.
34
Cf. Nachtergael 1977, 21–22, 147–50; Bearzot 1989; Ameling 1996, 145–58; Alcock 1996,
256–58.
35
Cf. Strootman 2005, 118–21.
9
this comparison also offered victorious Hellenistic kings an opportunity to equate themselves
with both the triumphant Olympian gods and their ‘ancestor’ Herakles.
36
Within Hellenistic literature, however, we find few references to the Gigantomachy.
37
Besides Kallimachos’ designation of the Galatians as ‘late-born Titans’ (Hymn 4. 174, see
below) and a number of passing mentions elsewhere (for example, Kallimachos Hymn 1. 3,
Hymn 5. 7–8, fr. 119 ed. Harder), we only have a fragmentary attribution of the story to
Euphorion (fr. 57 ed. Lightfoot = SSH 454C) and the remains of a papyrus mentioning the
‘very mighty tribes of giants’ (κρατερώτατα φοῖλα [= φῦλα] γιγάντ[ω]ν) and the ‘savage race
of men’ (γένος ἄγριον ἀνδρῶν, P. Chicago MS inv. 1061 = P. Lit. Goodspeed 2 = CA pp. 82–
89: col. VI 13–14). Such texts may well have employed the Gigantomachy as a parallel for
contemporary events,
38
but we should not speculate further.
The same cannot be said of the world of art, however, where the interpretation of the
Pergamene Great Altar’s Gigantomachy as an implicit celebration of victory over the
Galatians, first proposed by Koepp,
39
has become almost universal scholarly dogma. Von
Salis, for example, claims that ‘die Gigantomachie ist ein Symbol der Gallierkämpfe’, while
Mitchell asserts that the Giants were ‘represented iconographically in the guise of northern
barbarians, with thick manes of unkempt hair and full beards, an unmistakable allusion to the
Galatians’.
40
Despite such claims, however, this connection never appears to have been fully
argued for: most scholars merely point to the vague similarities between the frenzied nature
of the Giants and Galatians,
41
or note the possible context of the Roman-Pergamene defeat of
the Galatians in 189 BC at the foot of Phrygia’s Mt Olympos.
42
Yet the identification has
been contested in recent years by Junker, who insists that there is no positive evidence in its
favour, arguing that the commonly cited parallels (Kallimachos’ Hymn to Delos and Attalos’
36
Cf. Strootman 2005, 133–34, 138; Queyrel 2017.
37
For a full survey, see Prioux 2017, especially 156–72.
38
Suggested for Euphorion by Primo 2009, 100 and Barbantani 2014, 39; for the papyrus
fragment, see Barbantani 2001, 198.
39
Koepp 1883, 32: quis dubitabit quin non sine tacita Gallorum ab Attalo atque ab ipso Eumene
non semel superatorum significatione in ara illa Pergamena ... Gigantomachia sit expressa.
40
Von Salis 1912, 21 and Mitchell 2003, 286. Other supporters of the identification include
Fränkel 1952, 146, n. 10; 1968, 157–58; Webster 1964, 190–91; Hansen 1971, 319–20; Robertson
1975, 539; Callaghan 1981, 115; Strobel 1991, 110–11, n. 67; 1994, 89; Moreno 1994, 430–31; Radt
1999, 175–76; Stewart 2000, 40; 2004, 234; Green 2000, 175; Strootman 2005, 131, n. 110; Chaniotis
2005, 191; Queyrel 2005, 130–36; Courtieu 2011, 10; Demandt 2013, 33–39.
41
Queyrel 2005, 134. For such general similarities, see Kistler 2007; 2009, 192–243.
42
Moreno 1994, 430–31.
10
Athenian dedication) are not sufficiently close (in time or place) and that the depiction of the
vanquished Giants is too vague to merit such an allegorical interpretation.
43
When we examine the frieze closely, it is indeed true that the Giants have no
distinctively Galatian attributes: no Giant wears a torque or carries the Galatian oval shield.
In fact, the representation of the Giants seems traditional, besides the new variety of
animalistic forms. The mixture of hoplite and unarmed Giants, for example, is already visible
in the north frieze of the Siphnian Treasury at Delphi,
44
as well as the Gigantomachy reliefs
from the temple of Athena Polias at Priene.
45
Given that other historical connections in the
frieze have also been challenged recently,
46
it might seem that scholars’ certainty about a
Galatian allegory was misplaced.
However, I would argue that it is still possible to uphold the connection between the
Galatians and the Giants of the frieze, especially if we approach the problem from a
perspective of ‘reader/viewer-response’, rather than just ‘authorial intent’. The Gigantomachy
had long been used as a comparison for conflicts on the human plane, reflecting the common
Greek preference for indirect allegory over direct treatments of historical events.
47
In art, we
have already noted the Gigantomachy on the Parthenon’s East Metopes, but we could also
add the Athenian Hephaisteion, whose east frieze appears to have represented Theseus’
Pallantid enemies as Giants.
48
Given the Attalids’ imitation of Athens elsewhere on the
Pergamene acropolis and the echoes of the Athenian Parthenon in the Altar itself,
49
it would
hardly be surprising if some viewers saw the same allegorical parallel underlying Eumenes’
monument.
In literature, meanwhile, the Gigantomachy was even more firmly established as an
analogue of human conflicts. The contrast between Hippomedon and Hyperbios in Aischlyos’
Seven Against Thebes is enacted by the emblems of their respective shields, Typhon and
Zeus, presenting the human encounter as a replay of Zeus’ battle in heaven (491–520). In
43
Junker 2003, 428–33. Cf. the similarly sceptical Ridgway 2000, 58, n. 53; and Prignitz 2008,
73, n. 476.
44
See Vian 1988, no. 2.
45
Carter 1983, 94–95; pls. XXa–b, XXII–III.
46
For example, the anti-Macedonian element identified by Ritter 1981; Kunze 1990, 137;
Yfantidis 1993; Moreno 1994, 429–30; Stewart 2000, 40; challenged by Ehling 2000; De Grummond
2000, 260; Ridgway 2000, 36.
47
Napp 1936, 4–5. Compare epinician poets’ frequent deployment of mythical analogies.
48
Thus Reber 1998, 42–46.
49
For example, the chariot group of Helios on the south frieze quotes from the Parthenon frieze,
while the images of Zeus and Athena on the east frieze echo Poseidon and Athena on the Parthenon’s
west pediment: see Robertson 1975, 539–40; Smith 1991, 161; Stewart 1993, 165.
11
Lykophron’s Alexandra, the hybristic Persian Xerxes is explicitly called a ‘giant’ (γίγαντα,
1414), and in Apollonios’ Argonautika, Polydeukes’ fight with Amykos is similarly mapped
onto the clash of Olympian and chthonic forces through the explicit comparison of the latter
with ‘a son of Typhoeus or a Giant’ (2. 38–40).
50
Perhaps the clearest example of the
Gigantomachy parallel, however, comes in Pindar’s first Pythian Ode, in which Hieron’s
victories over the Carthaginians and Etruscans are compared with Zeus’ imposition of order
on the monstrous Typhon. By calling the Carthaginians ‘Phoenician’ (ὁ Φοίνιξ, Pythian 1.
72), Pindar parallels them with Typhon’s crimson flames (φοίνισσα ... φλόξ, Pythian 1. 24);
and by locating Typhon’s prison at Kyme, rather than the Homeric country of the Arimoi (εἰν
Ἀρίμοις: Iliad 2. 783), he recalls Hieron’s Etruscan victory at the same site (Κύμας: Pythian
1. 18, 72).
51
By the mid-Hellenistic period, there was thus a long tradition in art and literature
of paralleling the Gigantomachy with clashes against ‘barbarians’ on earth.
52
And indeed, this
tradition would have been reinforced by contemporary Euhemerist interpretations of the
Gigantomachy, in which the Giants were simply another barbaric tribe, further facilitating
their analogical potential.
53
Given this established pattern, any viewer of the Great Altar may well have been pre-
disposed to detect a contemporary reference in the frieze’s general design even without a
direct visual cue. Upon renewed inspection, however, such a cue may in fact be present.
Among the numerous allusions in the Gigantomachy, it has been noted that Apollo’s
opponent on the east frieze (Fig. 2) echoes the pose of both the Naples Dying Gaul (Fig. 3)
and (in inverse) the Capitoline Dying Trumpeter (Fig. 4), two statues which are linked with
the Attalids’ Galatian dedications.
54
The pose could be nothing more than an iconographic
convention for portraying a dying warrior, but given the absence of precisely comparable
sculptures,
55
alongside the ‘allusions’ present elsewhere in the frieze, this link may well be
deliberate. Apollo’s opponent, prominently pictured on the east frieze (the first visible to any
50
Hunter 1991, 87–90 with n. 25. For the struggle between Olympian and chthonic forces as a
‘recurrent theme in the epic as a whole’, see Lawall 1966, 133, n. 21.
51
Skulsky 1975, 21. Note also the comparison with Salamis and Plataia at Pythian 1. 75–80; cf.
Bakchylides 15. 57–63, where the Giants are a negative exemplum of hybris.
52
For Roman receptions of this tradition, see Hardie 1986.
53
Vian 1952b, 10–15.
54
Moreno 1994, 475; Stewart 1993, 163; Schmidt-Dounas 2000, 241, n. 415; Coarelli 2014, 78.
Demandt (2013, 33–39) goes too far in precisely identifying this figure as Brennos, the leader of the
attack on Delphi: see Schwemmer (2014) for a criticism of her methodology.
55
The closest parallels (none very precise) are Roman images of Adonis (see Servais-Soyez 1981,
nos. 38b, 39b) and the Archaic Aphaia Temple warriors.
12
approaching viewer), would then be a key marker of the Altar’s larger significance, just as a
Homeric hapax legomenon or ‘Alexandrian footnote’ might mark a literary allusion.
56
The general context of the Altar on the Pergamene Acropolis strengthens this
suggestion, for it was located directly below the Athena Sanctuary, which included an array
of prominent Galatian dedications. Other features of the Altar, moreover, also interacted with
the Attalids’ ideology: many gods depicted on the frieze represent the major recipients of
Pergamene cult; the divine mother/son groups evoke the Attalids’ highly prized family
solidarity;
57
and the sea gods may allegorically represent Pergamene naval supremacy.
58
If
these aspects of the Altar are carefully tailored to the Attalids’ ideology, it seems likely that
an ancient viewer could have also interpreted the Gigantomachy as a reflection of the
Attalids’ recent historical conflicts.
Of course, one must still ask why comparison with the Galatians should be privileged
over the Attalids’ other opponents, such as the Seleukids, who are also mentioned a number
of times in the Athena sanctuary dedications. Given the mixture of spoils in the sanctuary’s
weapons relief,
59
and the variety of opponents visible in the Pergamene bronze plaque
(Galatians, Macedonians, and Anatolians),
60
some scholars may shrink from prioritising one
‘identification’ above all others. And we must acknowledge, too, that some ancient viewers
may have interpreted the frieze as a simple celebration of the divine order at the heart of the
Attalids’ city, without any precise historical reference. But even so, given the prominent
depiction of Galatians elsewhere in Pergamon,
61
and the attractiveness of the Galatians as an
easily demonisable foe,
62
it is likely that some viewers would have prioritised the Gallic
connection. Given the literary, artistic and Euhemeristic precedent for paralleling Giants and
barbarians, as well as the ‘signpost’ allusion in Apollo’s opponent and the general context of
the Pergamene acropolis, it certainly seems that the Galatians are a key element lying below
the surface of the Pergamene Gigantomachy.
Cosmos and Chaos: The Pattern Established
56
For such literary markers, see Wills 1996, 15–41; Hinds 1998, 1–3; Nelson forthcoming.
57
Stewart 2000, 36–37; Junker 2012, 187. This theme is also reflected in Pergamene literature:
Nelson 2020, 7–8.
58
Junker 2003.
59
Moreno 1994, 422–23, figs. 541–43.
60
Courtieu 2011, 12–15.
61
Marszal 2000, 205.
62
Cf. Polybios 21. 40. 2 on the far greater impact on local inhabitants of a Galatian victory rather
than a defeat of Antiochos III.
13
From the foregoing discussion, therefore, it is clear that Attalos I’s dedication on the
Athenian Acropolis engaged with both classical Athenian and contemporary traditions.
Hellenistic victories over the Galatians were represented through a variety of mythico-
historical analogies. The Aitolians, Pausanias and the Ptolemaic poet of SH 958 employed the
Persians as a key parallel, while the Pergamene Great Altar’s Gigantomachy could be
interpreted by at least some viewers as an implicit celebration of the Attalids’ defeat of the
Galatians. We should note, however, the absence of the Trojan War as a point of comparison
for these events – a notable omission, especially given its analogical prominence for the
Greeks of the 5th century. It seems that the Persian Wars were more firmly imprinted on the
Greeks’ collective memory and could thus serve as the primary parallel and authorising
precedent for the successes of most Hellenistic kings and cities. Their victories over the
Galatians, both great and small, were written into a larger mythico-historical cycle in which
the forces of barbarous chaos were repeatedly quelled.
In the sections that follow, we shall see how these larger patterns were manipulated and
adapted in the literary celebrations of two specific victories: Ptolemy II Philadelphos’ defeat
of rebellious Galatian mercenaries (ca. 275 BC) and Antiochos I’s famous ‘Elephant Victory’
(ca. 275 or 268 BC). Together, these two case studies will highlight the extent to which both
local and literary contexts could re-shape the overarching narrative of the clash between
Greek order and barbarian chaos.
CULTURAL HYBRIDITY AND METAPOETICS: KALLIMACHOS’ HYMN TO DELOS
The longest extant literary celebration of victory over the Galatians occurs in Kallimachos’
Hymn to Delos, when the unborn Apollo pronounces a ‘prophecy’ to prevent his mother from
settling on Kos since the island is reserved for ‘another god’, Ptolemy II Philadelphos (Hymn
4. 162–95).
63
As Fantuzzi and Hunter observe, this speech is a rewriting of the ‘“not
Telphousa, but Delphi” episode of the Homeric Hymn [to Apollo]’, a key intertext for this
poem.
64
Yet here this motif is combined with a contemporary political flavour, as Apollo
predicts Philadelphos’ victory over the Galatians, and elevates this event to the same level as
the god’s defeat of those foes at Delphi in 279/8 BC (Hymn 4. 171–88):
63
For other evocations of the Galatians in Hellenistic poetry, cf. Pfeiffer 1949, 304–6 and
Cameron 1995, 281–82 on Kallimachos’ Galateia (fr. 378–79 ed. Pfeiffer); and Livrea 2004 on the
prominence of their ancestors Polyphemus and Galateia in Poseidippos and Theokritos. For this
genealogy, see also Anello 1984.
64
Fantuzzi and Hunter 2004, 355.
14
And now at some later time a common struggle will come to us, when late-born Titans
will raise up a barbarian dagger and Celtic war against the Hellenes, and rush from the
farthest west like snowflakes or equal in number to the stars, when they graze most
closely together upon the aether ... and the plain of Krisa and the glens of Hephaistos
will be hard pressed on all sides, and they shall see the rich smoke of their burning
neighbour, and no longer only by hearsay, but already beside the temple they will
perceive phalanxes of the enemy, and already beside my tripods they will behold the
swords and the shameless belts and the hated shields that will line the evil path of the
Galatians, a crazed tribe. Some of these shields will be my reward, others will be set by
the Nile, having seen their bearers breathe their last in the fire, the prizes of a much
labouring king. O Ptolemy who will be, these are Phoibos’ predictions for you.
65
Our only other historical evidence for this Egyptian conflict, generally dated to around 275
BC, is the scholion to this passage (ad vv. 175–87) and Pausanias’ Periegesis (1. 7. 2), which
report that 4000 Galatian mercenaries, employed to fight Philadelphos’ half-brother Magas of
Kyrene, rebelled against the Ptolemaic king and were promptly slaughtered. The details of
the incident remain uncertain: according to the scholion, the Galatians were lured to an island
in the Nile and burned to death, whereas Pausanias claims that the mercenaries killed one
another or died of starvation. The Hymn, however, hyperbolically transforms this potentially
humiliating episode into a momentous victory, enshrouded in the ornate and ambiguous terms
of oracular prophecy. A large part of this hyperbole results from Kallimachos’ appropriation
of the analogies that we have encountered above.
Greek vs Barbarian
From the start of Apollo’s account, Ptolemy’s victory is cast in the stark terms of a Greek-
barbarian dichotomy through the direct juxtaposition of Ἑλλήνεσσι and μάχαιραν
βαρβαρικήν (Hymn 4. 172–73), recalling the terms used to describe the 5th-century Persian
Wars.
66
This is one of just two occasions on which Kallimachos uses the Hellenic ethnic in
his extant work. The other also occurs in the context of the Galatian Wars, as part of the
opposition between Ἕλληνες and the Celtic leader Βρέννος (fr. 379 ed. Pfeiffer). It seems
65
Trans. adapted from Stephens 2015, 176.
66
Cf. the opposition of ἡ μὲν Ἑλλάδα | ... ἡ δὲ βάρβαρον in Aischylos’ Persai (186–87), alongside
the messenger’s contrast of terrified βάρβαροι and courageous Ἕλληνες (391–93).
15
that Kallimachos reserved this loaded word for describing the stark opposition between the
Greeks and Galatians.
His use of βαρβαρικός is also striking, not only because βάρβαρος itself never occurs in
Hellenistic poetry,
67
but also because the adjective is largely prosaic, occurring only once
elsewhere in verse in an epitaph for a combatant at Salamis attributed to ‘Simonides’
(Epigram 19a FGE [760–63]). Although it would be hazardous to posit a direct intertextual
relationship between these two works on the basis of the adjective alone, this epigram
nevertheless illuminates how similar Kallimachos’ rhetoric is to that deployed after the
Persian Wars. The juxtaposition of Ἕλληνες Μήδοις in its second verse closely parallels that
of Ἑλλήνεσσι μάχαιραν βαρβαρικήν in the Hymn (4. 172–73). Kallimachos universalises
Ptolemy’s minor achievement into a Panhellenic victory, similar to the Persian Wars.
In this regard, Kallimachos echoes the Aitolian rhetoric surrounding the victory at
Delphi, which was similarly cast in universalising terms,
68
and throughout the passage he
blurs the distinction between events in Egypt and Delphi. Not only are Ptolemy and Apollo
explicitly said to be engaged in a ‘common struggle’ (ξυνὸς ... ἄεθλος, Hymn 4. 171), but
Kallimachos also evokes elements of the propaganda surrounding the Delphic victory. The
reference to Philadelphos as ‘the most high lineage of the Saviours’ (Σαωτήρων ὕπατον
γένος, Hymn 4. 166) echoes not just the title of Philadelphos’ parents, but also the Delphic
institution of the Soteria festival, established to celebrate the σωτηρία of the Greeks at
Delphi.
69
The metonymical use of Κελτόν with Ἄρηα (Hymn 4. 173) evokes a common
formula associated with the Galatian Wars.
70
And the simile comparing the Galatians to
snowflakes (Hymn 4. 175) recalls the legendary halting of the Gallic attack on Delphi by
Apollo’s snowstorm (cf. Pausanias 10. 23. 4; Justin 24. 8. 10).
In constructing Ptolemy’s victory as parallel to the recent success at Delphi,
Kallimachos is presumably echoing contemporary Ptolemaic propaganda, since the
Callimachean scholion’s implausible claim that the Galatian rebels came from Brennos’ army
seems to imply other adaptations of the story to emphasise the connection with events at
67
Hunter 1991, 84–85.
68
Cf. Syll.3 398 (Cos) celebrating the σωτηρία of the Greeks against the βάρβαροι.
69
Cf. Fantuzzi and Hunter 2004, 356–57. For the Ptolemaic title, see also Giuseppetti 2012, 479.
For the Soteria, see Nachtergael 1977; Champion 1995.
70
Γαλατᾶν Ἄρης (Delphic Paean I 21, CA p. 141); βάρβαρος Ἄρης (Delphic Paean II (Limenius)
32, CA p. 150); cf. Κελτῶν ... Ἄρης (Anyte Epigram 23.4 HE [755] = Palatine Anthology 7. 492. 4);
Κελτὸς Ἄρης (SH 969. 6, suppl. Maas). See Barbantani 2001, 108. This formula might also evoke the
discourse surrounding the Persian Wars: compare the Persian facing [Ἕ]λλαν’ ... Ἄρ[η in Timotheos’
Persians (PMG 791. 118).
16
Delphi.
71
Indeed, a similar parallel was constructed by the Attalids, who celebrated their
Galatian victory by imitating the Aitolians in constructing a Stoa at Delphi; Kallimachos’
poem is a literary equivalent of their architectural project.
72
What is most striking, however,
is that within about five years, the Aitolians’ Galatian victory had already joined the likes of
the Persian Wars and Gigantomachy as a parallel to be employed by victorious kings.
Besides alluding to the recent past, Kallimachos’ account also makes use of more
traditional analogies. The Galatians are not initially mentioned by name (besides the
periphrastic Κελτὸν ... Ἄρηα), but are instead metaphorically introduced as ‘late-born Titans’
(ὀψίγονοι Τιτῆνες, Hymn 4. 174).
73
Just as the Pergamene Great Altar implicitly celebrated
the Attalids as the defenders of Olympian order, this metaphor similarly casts Ptolemy and
Apollo as defenders of civilisation. Indeed, the Galatians’ threat is emphasised by their
apparent subversion of traditional Greek religion. Not only do they wield a ‘barbaric knife’ as
a weapon (μάχαιραν βαρβαρικήν, Hymn 4. 172–73), in stark contrast to the use of the
Pythian sacrificial dagger (Δελφικὴ μάχαιρα),
74
but they will also tread an ‘evil road’ (κακὴν
ὁδόν, Hymn 4. 184), an inversion of the holy road which leads to the sanctuary (ἱερὰ ὁδός:
for example, Herodotos 6. 34).
75
The Galatians thus represent the inverse of religious order,
truly deserving the title of ‘modern-day Titans’.
This contrast of cosmic order and unruly chaos is enhanced further, however, by an
implicit analogy prompted by the apparent timing of the event. Pfeiffer has plausibly
suggested that the fragmentary verses 177a–b (‘...’ in the translation above) conceal a
reference to the Dorian procession sent to the valley of Tempe every eight years as part of the
Septerion festival. The defeat of the Galatians would then coincide with the ritual celebration
and re-enactment of Apollo’s mythic victory over Python, a key episode in the Homeric
Hymn to Apollo.
76
The fiery death of the Galatians in Kallimachos’ Hymn (ἐν πυρί, 4. 186)
acts as a close parallel to Python’s death in the sun’s heat (Homeric Hymn to Apollo 363–74)
and the Septerion’s ritual burning of a hut thought to re-enact his death (see Ephoros, BNJ 70
71
Hutchinson 1988, 39, n. 24. For a link to Aitolian propaganda also in fr. 379 ed. Pfeiffer, see
Petzl 1984.
72
For the Attalid Delphic monuments’ parallels with previous Aitolian and Athenian
commemorations, see Gruen 2000, 24–25; Koehn 2007, 90; and especially Schalles 1985, 104–27.
73
The names of Titans and Giants were readily interchangeable: see Vian 1952a, 173, n. 9.
Mineur (1984, 170–71) suggests that Kallimachos chose the former here to evoke the Galatians’ use
of gypsum (τίτανος) to whiten their hair.
74
Giuseppetti 2013, 161.
75
Gigante Lanazara 1990, 131.
76
Pfeiffer 1953, 24; Bing 1988, 130–31.
17
F 31b). By connecting Ptolemy’s victory with Delphi, therefore, Kallimachos aligns it with
both the Aitolians’ recent achievements and Apollo’s defeat of the primeval serpent Python,
incorporating Ptolemy’s achievement into a never-ending chain of Hellenic and Olympian
victories.
Seeing Double?
As many scholars have suggested, the Egyptian context of Ptolemaic Alexandria might
permit a further frame of reference for this conflict in the form of Pharaonic ideology.
77
In the
Egyptian conception of the world, the Pharaoh was the corporeal incarnation of Horus (who
was himself identified with Apollo, cf. Herodotos 2. 144, 156), so that Ptolemy’s (and
Apollo’s) victory over the barbarous Galatians could also be viewed as a re-enactment of
Horus’ victory over Seth, adhering to the Egyptian tradition of a new Pharaoh re-vanquishing
Seth’s representatives on earth. Indeed, the use of fire to defeat the Galatians evokes not only
Apollo’s slaying of Python, but also ‘the traditional method by which the Egyptian Pharaoh
destroyed his enemies’.
78
Especially striking in this regard is the parallel between the Gallic
mercenaries and the evil ‘Typhonians’ of the famous ‘Oracle of the Potter’.
79
The oracle
predicts that, like the Galatian mercenaries, the Typhonians will be destroyed in flames, while
they also wear girdles (ζωνοφόροι), just as Kallimachos’ Galatians wear ‘shameless girdles’
(ζωστῆρας ἀναιδέας, Hymn 4. 183). Given these similarities, we could thus also posit an
intercultural analogy within Kallimachos’ Hymn: the defeat of the Galatians as a parallel to
the re-establishment of Egyptian ma’at (‘order’).
Despite these similarities, however, we should be wary of giving excessive prominence
to this Egyptianising interpretation due to its inherent methodological problems.
80
As Heerink
has noted, ‘Most of the evidence for Ptolemaic interest in Egyptian culture postdates
Philadelphus’ reign, and to use this material to study the situation under Philadelphus could
be dangerously anachronistic.’
81
Moreover, this Egyptianising interpretation provokes
questions about Kallimachos’ intended audience and Greek awareness of indigenous myths.
Those scholars who argue for an Egyptian connection never assert that Kallimachos was
77
Koenen 1983, 174–90; 1993, 81–84; Mineur 1984, 13; Bing 1988, 131–39; Schmidt-Dounas
2000, 297–99; Stephens 2003, 114–21; Laukola 2012.
78
Bing 1988, 134 with n. 81.
79
See especially Laukola 2012, 92–93.
80
For a balanced discussion of these issues, see Hunter 2003, 46–53.
81
Heerink 2010b, 384. Heerink never adequately addresses this obstacle in his own argument that
Theokritos’ Idyll 17 systematically translates Egyptian, Pharaonic ideology into Greek terms.
18
composing for a primarily native audience, but rather assume that a Greek audience would be
familiar with Egyptian myths, despite the fact that, as Goldhill notes, ‘Plutarch (many years
later) still has to collect, explain and analyse [these] for his highly learned Greek audience’.
82
Most significant, however, is the fact that many elements in the poem are not so uniquely
‘Egyptian’ as to mandate a Pharaonic interpretation. Kallimachos’ account of the invading
Galatians, for example, fits a larger pattern of barbaric assaults on Greek sanctuaries within a
purely Greek literary and historical framework: we have already noted the foiled Persian
attacks on Delphi (Herodotos 8. 35–39, cf. 9. 42), but we could also add the threat of the
serpentine Kadmos and Harmonia’s barbarous hordes in Euripides’ Bacchae 1330–39, as well
as the Kimmerians’ assault against the sanctuary of Artemis in Kallimachos’ Hymn to
Artemis (Hymn 3. 251–58). In these cases, too, the barbarians are a countless mass and will
suffer a painful return home.
83
Kallimachos’ Hymn thus makes complete sense within pre-
existing Greek traditions of sanctuary-raiding barbarians.
84
Already in the 5th century, moreover, we should recall that Pindar’s first Pythian Ode
equated a king’s victory over barbarian foes with the establishment and maintenance of
Olympian order, offering clear Greek precedent for Kallimachos’ encomium of Ptolemy.
Indeed, Kallimachos appears to acknowledge this debt by alluding to Pindar’s ode in the
Hymn, particularly in the Ares-Briareos simile (Hymn 4. 133–47), where Briareos, the giant
trapped beneath Mt. Aetna, recalls the Pindaric Typhon (Pythian 1. 15–28), especially with
the repeated mention of Hephaistos (Pythian 1. 25–26, Hymn 4. 144).
85
Kallimachos may
even offer a metaliterary hint towards this intertext with the phrase πυρὶ τυφομένοιο
(‘smouldering with fire’, Hymn 4. 141), teasingly evoking the name of Pindar’s giant.
86
The
wider importance of Pythian 1 for Kallimachos and his Hymns, meanwhile, is also clear from
the echo of its opening in Kallimachos’ Hymn to Apollo: Kallimachos’ description of the sea,
Thetis and Niobe being lulled to silence by the power of Apolline song (Hymn 2. 18–24) is
readily reminiscent of the soothing effect of Apollo’s lyre at Pythian 1. 1–12.
87
The
82
Goldhill 2005, 102.
83
See ἀναρίθμῳ στρατεύματι (Euripides Bacchae 1335) and ψαμάθῳ ἴσον (Hymn 3. 253); cf.
ἰσάριθμοι τείρεσιν (Hymn 4. 175–176). And νόστον ἄθλιον (Bacchae 1337); οὐ γὰρ ἔμελλεν ...
νοστήσειν (Hymn 3. 255–258); cf. κακὴν ὁδόν (Hymn 4. 184).
84
See Bing 1988, 129–30, n. 67. Cf. the Phleguai who attacked Delphi (Pherekydes, BNJ 3 F 41e)
and the foiled attack on Zeus Panamaros’ sanctuary (Roussel 1931).
85
Bing 1988, 123; Giuseppetti 2013, 191–96; Lechelt 2014, 98.
86
Cf. Giuseppetti 2013, 194.
87
I thank Prof. Richard Hunter for drawing my attention to this further parallel.
19
assimilation of poetic and divine order in Kallimachos’ Hymn to Delos is thus completely
comprehensible against the background of earlier Greek literature.
Besides such external parallels, however, the defeat of the Galatians also fits within a
larger contrast between order and disorder in Kallimachos’ poem and the Hymns as a
collection: the whole poem contrasts the chaos of the pre-Apollonian world with the order
instated by his birth,
88
including his defeat of Python and the Niobids (Hymn 4. 90–97). It
ends with the figure of Theseus, who escaped ‘Pasiphae’s wild son’ and the ‘coiled seat of
the crooked labyrinth’ (Hymn 4. 310–11), offering another example of the defeat of a
monstrous beast. Elsewhere in the Hymns, moreover, we find similar defeats of primordial
chaos, with Zeus’ vanquishing of the ‘Pelagonians’ at Hymn 1. 3 and Apollo’s defeat of
Python at Hymn 2. 97–104.
89
If we regard the Hymns as a carefully arranged ‘Poetry
Book’,
90
Apollo’s prophecy seems integral to the collection’s wider thematic concerns.
Given that the ideas embedded in the Hymn to Delos make sense within their own
Greek and literary context, therefore, we should be wary of exaggerating the prominence of
any Egyptian parallels. In saying that, however, we do have some evidence that the Ptolemies
actively sought to make Egyptian kingship more understandable to their Graeco-Macedonian
subjects, such as in the case of Manetho’s Aigyptiaka, which charted a history of the
pharaohs in Greek, assimilating Egyptian gods to their traditional Greek equivalents.
91
We
thus cannot entirely rule out the possibility that some of Kallimachos’ audience may have
been familiar with at least the basics of Egyptian ideology, but the inexplicit and indirect
nature of the Egyptianising features in the Hymn surely demands caution and tells against the
existence of any large-scale cross-cultural programme in this poetry. The clash of Horus and
Seth remains one further potential analogy underlying Kallimachos’ Hymn, but it is neither
the most emphatic nor the most pronounced.
Metapoetics
Before leaving the Hymn, let us explore whether Kallimachos’ depiction of the Galatians has
any further significance. Returning to Pindar’s first Pythian, we should note that Hieron’s
88
Bing 1988, 112–13; Laukola 2012, 87–88.
89
Acosta-Hughes and Stephens 2002, 245. For the ‘Pelagonians’, cf. Hunter and Fuhrer 2002,
170, n. 67.
90
For the Hymns as a ‘Poetry Book’, see Hopkinson 1984, 13; Haslam 1993, 115; Hunter and
Fuhrer 2002, 176–78; Ukleja 2005, 89–107; Giuseppetti 2013, 76–83; Stephens 2015, 12–14.
91
It is worth noting that the same Manetho played an important role (according to Plutarch Isis
and Osiris 28) in the introduction (under Soter) of the cult of the new god Sarapis, another instance of
the conflation of Egyptian and Greek ideas.
20
concord was paralleled not only with Zeus’ political order, but also with Apollo’s poetic and
musical harmony (Pythian 1. 1–12). An interest in poetics also surfaces in Kallimachos’
Hymn, where scholars have long regarded Delos as a metapoetic allegory for Kallimachos’
poetry: as Bing notes, her ‘characteristics (her diminutive size and slender, delicate stature;
her purity and love of song; her freedom from violence and war) allowed Callimachus to see
in her ... a metaphor for [his] poetic principles’.
92
Especially significant here is the description
of the island as ‘slender’ at Hymn 4. 191 (νῆσος ἀραιή), an adjective which the scholia gloss
with λεπτή, that most Hellenistic of ‘buzzwords’.
93
However, scholars have been less interested in identifying elements in the poem that
are opposed to Delos and Kallimachean poetics, the possible equivalents of the Aitia
Prologue’s ‘Telchines’, Kallimachos’ malignant detractors. Bing briefly noted Ares’ martial
presence, followed by Slings who also highlighted the contrast between the small Delos and
the other large, mountainous islands.
94
To this we could add the presence of the Telchines
themselves, associated with the unstable world prior to Apollo’s birth (Hymn 4. 30–32), just
as they appear with negative associations elsewhere in Kallimachos’ poetry (Aitia fr. 75. 64–
69 ed. Harder). But we should perhaps consider whether the Galatians also form part of this
rhetorical dichotomy. They immediately precede the description of Delos as ‘slender’ (Hymn
4. 191) and their very nature marks them as anti-Kallimachean figures: their warlike
associations (Κελτὸν ... Ἄρηα, Hymn 4. 173) and military gear (swords, belts and shield,
Hymn 4. 183–84) match the Telchines’ preference for martial subject matter (Aitia fr. 1. 3–5
ed. Harder), just as their monstrously large size and countless numbers (ἰσάριθμοι τείρεσιν,
‘equal in number to the stars’, Hymn 4. 175–76) stand in sharp contrast to Kallimachos’
preference for slenderness and brevity (Aitia fr. 1. 9–12, 23–24 ed. Harder).
95
Moreover, they
are also described as a foolish tribe (ἄφρονι φύλῳ, Hymn 4. 184), a phrase which not only
92
Bing 1988, 94, cf. 110–28; Slings 2004; Lechelt 2014, 97–103. For scepticism of metapoetic
readings, see Zanker 1999; Asper 1997, 224–34. For a defence, see Heerink 2010a, 9–13, condensed
as 2015, 19–21. They cannot, of course, supersede other interpretations, but usefully complement
them.
93
Cf. Kallimachos Aitia fr. 1. 24 ed. Harder; Epigram 27. 3 ed. Pfeiffer; Aratos’ acrostic at
Phainomena 783–87; Hedylos Epigram 5. 2 HE [1854]; Leonidas Epigram 101.1 HE [2573] =
Palatine Anthology 9. 25. 1; Poseidippos Epigram 1. 4 edd. Austin and Bastianini; Ptolemy SH 712.
4; Nelson 2018, 260 with n. 154.
94
Ares: Bing 1988, 122–24; Slings 2004, 292–93. Island contrast: Slings 2004, 287–90. Cf.
Stephens 2015, 189–90, who notes how Hera is figured as a ‘braying’ enemy (ἐπεβρωμᾶτο,
Kallimachos Hymn 4. 56) like the Telchines of the Aitia Prologue (fr. 1. 30–31 ed. Harder).
95
For the Galatians’ size, see, for example, Pausanias 10. 20. 7: ‘The Keltoi as a race are far taller
than any other people.’ On the issues at stake in the Aitia Prologue, see Harder 2012 II, 6–87,
especially 6–11.
21
recalls the irrationality which Aristotle had already associated with peoples of the west
(Nichomachean Ethics 3. 1115b) and which characterises the Galatians and Persians
elsewhere,
96
but also marks them as a foil to Apollonian discipline and order, similar to the
‘ignorant’ Telchines of the Aitia Prologue (νήιδες, Aitia fr. 1. 2 ed. Harder).
97
Within the poem, therefore, the Galatians fit into a larger cosmic pattern which sets
harmonious Kallimachean poetic concord and Ptolemaic political harmony, both centred on
the island of Delos, against the discord of war and barbarians. In this respect, the hymn’s
metapoetic dichotomy is very similar to that identified by Ambühl in the Aitia Prologue,
where the equation of the Telchines with braying donkeys (an animal sacred to Seth) is
opposed by the Apollonian and Kallimachean cicada.
98
In our Hymn, the Galatians can
similarly be read as a partial allegory of the Telchines’ lack of sophistication and culture. In
the complex web of Kallimachos’ poetry, the Galatians are not only represented through the
standard analogies with other barbaric forces (both Greek and Egyptian), but also serve
allegorically as a foil for Kallimachos’ poetic principles.
COLLAPSING THE OPPOSITION: ANTIOCHOS’ ELEPHANT BATTLE AND LUKIAN’S ZEUXIS
Having explored the various means by which Hellenistic kings, cities and poets mapped their
victories over the Galatians onto a recurring Greek-barbarian dichotomy, we should finally
ask how Seleukid ideology might fit into this picture. No Seleukid treatment of the Galatian
invasion survives, yet we know that at least one existed, since the Suda (σ 443) claims that
the otherwise unknown Simonides of Magnesia wrote an epic poem on Antiochos I’s
‘Elephant Victory’ of around 275/68 BC (SH 723 = BNJ 163 T 1), the same battle which
Lukian narrated several centuries later in one of his ‘preliminary chats’ (prolaliai), the Zeuxis
or Antiochos.
99
Beyond these traces, however, there is no other certain mention of the event
96
See SH 958. 9 and n. 33 above.
97
In this regard, it might be significant that the Telchines themselves are also called a ‘tribe’ in
the Aitia Prologue (φῦλον α[, Aitia fr. 1. 7 ed. Harder; cf. ἄφρονι φύλῳ, Kallimachos Hymn 4. 184).
Of course, ἄφρον will not fit metrically into the lacuna at the end of the Prologue’s line (the closest
parallel among current suggestions is Wilamowitz’s ἄ[μουσον], apud Maas 1928, 130), but both the
Telchines and Galatians are clearly presented as combative bands of people. The noun only occurs
once elsewhere in Kallimachos’ extant work (Aitia fr. 75. 51 ed. Harder).
98
Ambühl 1995, 211; cf. Harder 2003 on the Aitia’s interest in the development of civilisation
and order.
99
The date and context of the battle are contested, as are Simonides’ date and the identity of
‘Antiochos’. I follow Ceccarelli 2008 in regarding the poet as a contemporary of Antiochos III who
celebrated the achievements of Antiochos I, thereby contributing to the legitimising construction of a
‘Seleukid past’ (cf. Cameron 1995, 284–85; Primo 2009, 87–88; Visscher 2020, 162–67). For
alternative views, see Coşkun 2012, 59–60, 67–68; Ryan 2020.
22
(except perhaps for passing references in Appian’s Syriake
100
and Lukian’s A Slip of the
Tongue in Greeting).
101
The only other hints of the victory come in the form of terracotta
figurines from Myrina which depict an elephant trampling a warrior whose oval shield and
thick mane of hair mark him as a Galatian.
102
From what survives, however, we can still gain
some understanding of how the Seleukids’ clashes with the Galatians were represented and
what analogies, if any, they employed. To do so, let us first examine Lukian’s narration of the
event, before considering his potential sources and the significance of his narrative.
Lukian’s Zeuxis
Lukian’s account of the ‘Elephant Victory’ occurs in the second half of the Zeuxis (8–11), an
introductory piece on the topic of innovation.
103
The first half uses the example of a painting
by Zeuxis whose novelty has distracted audiences from its technical accomplishments, just as
Lukian’s innovations (he fears) have distracted his audiences from his true skill. The second
half recounts Antiochos’ battle with the Galatians and the king’s reliance on a new military
stratagem: the deployment of war elephants.
Lukian begins by contrasting the well-prepared Galatian force and Antiochos’ hastily
prepared troops. While the former comprised a 24-deep phalanx, 20,000 cavalry, 80 scythed
chariots and 160 ordinary war chariots, Antiochos had a small force, largely skirmishers and
light-armed troops, half of whom lacked defensive armour. The king was thus disposed to
negotiate rather than fight (Zeuxis 8). However, Theodotas of Rhodes advised Antiochos to
employ his sixteen elephants as a surprise weapon, concealing them before the engagement
and sending them against the Galatian cavalry to frighten the horses into trampling the
100
Appian Syriake 65. 343: ‘[Antiochos I] who was even hailed “Saviour” after driving out the
Galatians who had invaded Asia from Europe.’ This probably refers to the ‘Elephant Battle’, but
Appian’s failure to mention elephants explicitly leaves some scholars uncertain. For recent views, see
Brodersen 1989, 193–96; Tomaschitz 2002 164–67; Coşkun 2012, 62, n. 17.
101
Lukian A Slip of the Tongue in Greeting 9: ‘When Antiochos Soter was about to engage the
Galatians, he dreamed that Alexander stood over him and instructed him to give the army the
password “Health”; and it was with this word that he won that (ἐκείνην) extraordinary victory.’ As
with Appian, there is no explicit mention of elephants, but the use of the demonstrative ἐκείνην seems
to imply a specific well-known success, presumably our ‘Elephant Battle’. For other literary sources
that have on occasion been linked to the battle, see Brodersen 1989, 196–97; Primo 2009, 256, n. 335.
102
S. Reinach and Pottier 1885, pl. XI. The connection of these figurines with the ‘Elephant
Battle’ seems likely, although Coşkun (per litteras) advises some caution given the widespread nature
of elephant representations in the Seleukid kingdom (see Kosmin 2014a, 1–3) and of Galatian defeats
throughout the Hellenistic world. The presence of the mahout and trampled Galatian also indicates
that the terracottas cannot be a precise reproduction of the trophy mentioned by Lukian, which only
included an elephant (Zeuxis 11): cf. Coşkun 2012, 65.
103
On Lukian’s prolaliai, see Branham 1985; Nesselrath 1990; Billault 2006.
23
Galatian infantry (Zeuxis 9). The king did exactly this, and since the Galatians and their
horses had never seen an elephant before, they panicked, causing chaos on the battlefield
(Zeuxis 10). Most of the Galatians were killed or captured, while Antiochos’ troops sang the
Paean and proclaimed him kallinikos. Yet the king, in tears, was ashamed that their victory
had relied on sixteen beasts, and ordered that only an elephant be carved on the trophy
(Zeuxis 11).
Notably, this account does not stress the significance of the Galatians as Antiochos’
opponents, except for the fact that they are a mighty obstacle to overcome. Rather than
emphasising their barbaric ferocity, Lukian instead focuses on their military strength
(ἀλκίμους, καρτερῶς, Zeuxis 8) and large numbers (πλήθει παμπόλλους, Zeuxis 8). Unlike
Attalid, Aitolian and Ptolemaic propaganda, therefore, Lukian’s account of Antiochos I’s
victory does not subscribe to the dichotomies that we have explored above; it lacks any
connection to the larger mythico-historical pattern, except perhaps for the passing mention of
the typically Persian scythed chariot. Moreover, Antiochos’ desire for nothing but an elephant
on his trophy contrasts with the prominence of defeated Galatians in Attalid monuments. One
could perhaps ascribe these oddities to Lukian’s rhetoric, with its emphasis on novelty.
However, Koehn has regarded the lack of focus on the Galatians as an indication that
Antiochos was not interested in exploiting his Galatian victory in the same manner as his
rivals.
104
If he is right, we should ask why this might be. But we must first assess the
reliability and possible origins of Lukian’s account.
Lukian’s Reliability and Source(s)?
Lukian’s description of the ‘Elephant Battle’ has often been treated with scepticism by
scholars who question its historical accuracy and deem his account ‘clearly largely fantastic’
and ‘höchst misstrauisch’, its details ‘worthless rhetoric’ and ‘unglaubwürdig’.
105
Although
Lukian has found occasional defenders,
106
recent voices have added to the chorus of doubt.
107
Critics highlight, for example, the apparently high number of Galatian warriors, which
drastically exceeds Livy’s total of the 20,000 Galatians who crossed into Asia Minor in 278
BC (38. 16. 9), and ask why Antiochos would have risked his life and realm in facing them
104
Koehn 2007, 119–22.
105
Mitchell 1993, 18, n. 67; Stähelin 1907, 12, n. 2; Tarn 1926, 157; Tomaschitz 2002, 165, n.
683.
106
Above all, Bar-Kochva 1973, 2–3; cf. Scullard 1974, 122: ‘his outline of the battle may well
have a good pedigree’.
107
Especially Coşkun 2011, 89–95; 2012, 62–65.
24
with such a small force of his own. The Galatians’ presentation as a hybrid foe also attracts
attention, the combination of the Greek phalanx technique, Persian scythed chariot and
Galatian cavalry deemed a Lukianic invention. Others query the claim that the Galatians had
never seen an elephant before, despite the fact that some Galatians are said to have
encountered at least one elephant when facing Ptolemy Keraunos (Memnon of Herakleia BNJ
434 F 1. 8. 8),
108
while MacLeod questions the mention of Theodotas of Rhodes, which he
believes ‘looks suspiciously like a mistake’ for Theodotos of Aitolia, a general of Antiochos
III involved in the capture of Sardis (Polybios 7. 15–18).
109
Given that Lukian is fond of
fantastical elements in his battle descriptions, and has elsewhere been treated cautiously as a
historical source,
110
it may seem that his account is too inaccurate to inform us about anything
other than his own fertile imagination.
Tangled up in this argument, however, are two interrelated but ultimately distinct
issues: the degree of the account’s historicity, and the degree of Lukianic invention. Although
the first is not my principal concern here, it is still worth stressing that many elements in
Lukian’s account are not as implausible as they are often made out to be. The Galatians’
numbers, although high, are not as incredible as they might at first seem: Livy’s total of
20,000 has been questioned by modern scholars,
111
so should not be used as the objective
criterion against which to judge Lukian’s figure; and indeed, when compared with the
numbers of Galatians recorded in mainland Greece (for example, Pausanias’ 152,000 infantry
and 20,400 cavalry: 10. 19. 9),
112
Lukian’s figures seem less extraordinary, especially if we
imagine more Galatians crossing to Asia Minor after the first batch mentioned by Livy. The
mis-conceptualisation of a barbaric force as an ordered phalanx, moreover, finds a parallel
not only in Kallimachos’ Hymn to Delos (φάλαγγας, Hymn 4. 181), but also in Caesar’s
account of the Germans (Germani celeriter ex consuetudine sua phalange facta, Gallic War 1.
52), while it is worth stressing that the Galatians were not a uniform, homogeneous mass, so
those who faced Antiochos were not necessarily the same as those who had previously faced
108
Though we may doubt Memnon’s claim that Ptolemy Keraunos rode an elephant against the
Galatians: this detail is absent from all other accounts of his death (Justin 24. 5. 6; Pausanias 1. 16. 2,
10. 19. 7; Diodoros 22. 3. 2) and Coşkun has plausibly suggested (per litteras) that it is a fabrication,
reflecting a Seleukid source’s moralising construction of Keraunos as a tyrant and anti-Antiochos
figure.
109
Macleod 1991, 281.
110
Anderson 1976, 36–39; Borg 2004.
111
Darbyshire et al. 2000, 78.
112
Mitchell (1993, 14–15) notes that ‘These figures are high but not necessarily far from the truth.’
Cf. Diodoros 22. 9. 1 (150,000 infantry, 10,000 cavalry, 2000 wagons, alongside camp followers and
traders) and Justin 25. 1. 2 (15,000 infantry, 3000 cavalry).
25
Ptolemy Keraunos’ elephant (if it existed: n. 108). Even if they were, however, facing one
elephant is very different to a squadron of sixteen. The insufficient size and preparation of
Antiochos’ army could be explained by the revolt he suffered in Syria after his succession (cf.
OGIS 219), while the Theodotos mentioned by Polybios need not preclude the existence of a
namesake under Antiochos I. Indeed, we have epigraphic evidence that the name Theodotos
or Theodotas was connected with Rhodes from the 4th century.
113
Alongside the other
historically accurate details noted by Bar-Kochva,
114
the majority of Lukian’s account thus
seems historically plausible. The most suspect elements remain the size of the Galatian force
and their hybridity.
As for the second issue, the degree of Lukianic invention, there is good reason to think
that Lukian is largely drawing his account from some other source. It is unlikely on both
historical and literary grounds that the account is Lukian’s complete invention, given the
Suda’s mention of Simonides’ epic and the Myrina terracottas’ apparent allusion to the same
event. Moreover, the λέγεται (‘it is said’, Zeuxis 8) and ὥς φασιν (‘so they say’, Zeuxis 11)
which frame his entire account seem to acknowledge some debt to a pre-existing tradition in
the manner of ‘Alexandrian footnotes’.
115
Indeed, the passing mention of Antiochos’ battle in
A Slip of the Tongue in Greeting 9 suggests that Lukian expected his audience to be familiar
with the topic, while Nesselrath has noted how the story does not fit precisely with its broader
rhetorical context in the Zeuxis.
116
This suggests that it was not merely invented for this
occasion. Lukian’s other treatments of Seleukid history reinforce this impression: the only
other Seleukid episode in the Lukianic corpus for which we have any other evidence, the
romance between Antiochos and Stratonike (On the Syrian Goddess 17–18), has also
plausibly been connected to earlier sources,
117
and its general fidelity to these is suggested by
113
Bradeen 1974, no. 651 (4th century BC); ID 380, 385, 439, 442 (ca. 198–179 BC); ID 461 (ca.
169 BC); ID 421 (ca. 190 BC); cf. LGPN I, 213.
114
Bar-Kochva 1973, 2–3, noting the number of elephants, the Galatians’ use of cuirasses and
two-horse chariots, as well as the Seleukid battle tactics.
115
For the ‘Alexandrian footnote’, see Hinds 1998, 1–3; Nelson forthcoming. Admittedly, such
phrases may also conceal innovations (see Horsfall 1990, 55–59; 2016, 127–31), but other Lukianic
examples clearly do point to earlier literature: for example, Dialogues of the Sea-Gods 1. 5 on the
Cyclops eating strangers (ὥς φασι, cf. Hopkinson 2008, 204: ‘has Doris been reading Homer?’). See
also Nigrinus 18 (verbatim quotation of Iliad 11. 164 introduced with φασίν) and On Salaried Posts in
Great Houses 1 (echo of Odyssey 9. 14 marked by φασί): cf. Bouquiaux-Simon 1968, 153–55, 233–
34.
116
Nesselrath 1990, 130–31, n. 31.
117
Almagor 2016 connects the tale with Seleukid propaganda: see p. 77, n. 41 for possible
Hellenistic sources (Hieronymos, Phylarchos or Duris). The authenticity of On the Syrian Goddess
26
the fact that its details are ‘all attested in other versions’.
118
Given such behaviour elsewhere,
we would naturally expect at least the basics of Lukian’s account in the Zeuxis to reflect the
details of a larger tradition.
Of course, we cannot expect Lukian to offer us unmediated access to whatever sources
he used: his prolaliai were an important site of programmatic self-fashioning, and he would
have artfully tailored his material to his literary needs.
119
Yet even if nuances might be
embellished, it certainly seems, from both the evidence of the text and his other treatments of
Seleukid history, that the basics of his account are historically reliable and likely derive from
earlier description(s) of the battle. In that case, we are faced with two main alternatives for
the account’s origin: (1) that Lukian derived his tale from Simonides of Magnesia’s epic on
the subject; or (2) that he used some other, perhaps historiographical, source(s).
120
These
options are not mutually exclusive, since Lukian may have employed multiple sources, but let
us first explore each possibility in turn.
Epic/Simonides of Magnesia?
As the only other known treatment of the ‘Elephant Battle’, Simonides’ epic recorded in the
Suda is a natural candidate for Lukian’s source. Indeed, many modern scholars have
proposed that it was, but rarely with any argumentation.
121
Some talk vaguely of ‘epic’
elements in Lukian’s account,
122
but on closer inspection it is in fact difficult to identify
anything that is distinctively ‘epic’. Some words might appear to suggest a poetic source,
such as μεγαλωστί (Zeuxis 8), which occurs in traditional epic (Homer Iliad 16. 776, 18. 26;
has been questioned (see Lightfoot’s summary: 2003, 184–208), but I am persuaded by arguments for
Lukianic authorship. The two other extended treatments of Seleukid history in Lukian are the poetic
contest to praise Stratonike’s hair (Essays in Portraiture Defended 5: Nelson 2021) and Stratonike’s
relationship with Kombabos (On the Syrian Goddess 19–27). The latter’s debts to Near Eastern
traditions and Stratonike’s assimilation with Aphrodite again suggest that Lukian is drawing on
Hellenistic sources and (at least indirectly) on the Seleukids’ own propaganda: see Engels and
Erickson 2016, 47–59, 63–64.
118
Lightfoot 2003, 377.
119
Branham 1985; Coşkun 2012, 64–65; cf. Billault 2006, 57: Lukian is ‘the main character of his
prolalia. He is talking about himself.’
120
A third option, proposed by A. Reinach (1913, 193–202), is that Lukian was inspired by a
fresco of an elephant at Pergamon painted by Pytheas of Boura (Stephanos of Byzantium s.v. βοῦρα).
Given the fresco’s Pergamene location, however, a link with Antiochos’ victory seems unlikely.
121
Supporters of the connection include: Wernsdorf 1743, 42–43; T. Reinach 1889, 125–26; A.
Reinach 1913, 194; Goukowsky 1972, 490, n. 63; Bar-Kochva 1973, 2; Mitchell 1993, 18;
Tomaschitz 2002, 165, n. 684; Barbantani 2002–03, 42; Primo 2009, 256–57; Coşkun 2012, 67, n. 33;
Almagor 2019, 101, n. 69.
122
For example, Bar-Kochva 1973, 2; Tomaschitz 2002, 165, n. 684.
27
Odyssey 24. 40; Apollonios Rhodios Argonautika 2. 838, 4. 557) and the heavily epicising
fragment of Sappho (fr. 44. 18 ed. Voigt); however, it also occurs in Herodotos, Plato and
elsewhere in Lukian (for example Essays in Portraiture Defended 19). The compound
χαλκοθώρακας (Zeuxis 8) might seem a likelier ‘poetic’ candidate, since it occurs elsewhere
only in passages of lyric and tragic poetry, yet its scansion makes it incompatible with epic
hexameter.
123
The closest we in fact come to ‘epic’ in Lukian’s account is the double
quotation of the Iliad at the battle’s height:
δίφροι δ᾿ ἀνεκυμβαλίαζον (‘the chariots crashed over’, Zeuxis 10 ≈ Iliad 16. 379)
κείν᾿ ὄχεα κροτάλιζον (‘they rattled empty chariots’, Zeuxis 10 = Iliad 11. 160)
The first is a slight misquotation from Patroklos’ artisteia in Iliad 16, the latter an exact
quotation from Agamemnon’s aristeia in book 11.
124
If these epicisms did derive from
Simonides’ poem, we could see Antiochos’ victory being assimilated to that of famous epic
heroes. Yet this is highly implausible, since the first quotation is explicitly flagged as such by
the phrase τὸ τοῦ Ὁμήρου, which suggests that Lukian was drawing directly on Homer’s text,
rather than on another epic source, especially given Homer’s central educational role in this
period and his prominence throughout Lukian’s work.
125
Both quotations, moreover, contain
Homeric hapax legomena (ἀνακυμβαλίαζον and κροτάλιζον), the bread-and-butter of Second
Sophistic education.
There seems little reason, therefore, to support the opinion of most scholars who regard
Simonides as the main source for Lukian’s account. Rather, as Bienkowski noted almost a
century ago, ‘le langage de Lucien ne trahit pas l’influence d’une oeuvre poétique. Il faut
supposer par conséquent qu’il s’est inspiré soit d’une source intermédiaire en prose, soit qu’il
a changé à dessein la langue poétique de Simonide’.
126
Of these alternatives, one cannot deny
the possibility of the latter, but there are good reasons for favouring the former.
Prose Historian?
123
Instances of χαλκοθώραξ include Pindar fr. 52b. 1 edd. Snell and Maehler; Bakchylides 11.
123; Sophokles Ajax 179. Though note the comparable Homeric dis legomenon χαλκεοθώρηξ, which
occurs at Iliad 4. 448 and 8. 62.
124
Cf. Bouquiaux-Simon 1968, 166 and 153 respectively.
125
See Householder’s statistics on Homer’s dominance in Lukian (1941, 41); Bouquiaux-Simon
1968, especially the catalogue of Homeric references at 378–411; and Kim 2010. The phrase τὸ τοῦ
Ὁμήρου recurs four times in Lukian, including Zeuxis 2; cf. Bouquiaux-Simon 1968, 41–52 for
Lukian’s various similar phrases for introducing Homeric citations.
126
Bienkowski 1928, 149.
28
Many of the features of Lukian’s account are far more evocative of a prose historian’s work
than that of a panegyric epicist. The close attention to troop arrangement and numbers in
Zeuxis 8 is a common feature of military history,
127
and differs from the epic norm. Although
the Iliadic ‘Catalogue of Ships’ carefully lists the various Greek contingents, it presents a
static scene and is far less concerned with precise numbers and configurations. The transition
in Theodotas’ advice from indirect to direct speech (Zeuxis 9), moreover, resembles the
writing style of a prose historian rather than that of an epicist, while the narrative’s
conclusion lacks the eulogistic elements common to panegyric epic. Instead, the final image
of a tearful Antiochos (δακρύσας, Zeuxis 11) lamenting his reliance on the sixteen elephants
evokes a common motif of Greek (and especially Hellenistic) historiography: the weeping
king.
128
Although Antiochos is not bemoaning the fate of his defeated opponents, as is usual
in such scenes, he still laments the fragility of human success.
Of course, these apparently ‘historiographical’ elements could simply reflect Lukian’s
adaptations of Simonides’ poem, especially under the influence of Battle Progymnasmata,
such as that of Libanios. Libanios’ sample πεζομαχία has a vaguely similar structure to
Lukian’s account, including a description of the troop arrangements (1. 5), rout (1. 10–11)
and victory celebrations (1. 12).
129
Yet the similarities stop there: whereas Lukian spends
considerable time on the initial formation of Antiochos’ tactics, with direct speech and
specifically named individuals, followed by a more distanced description of the battle as a
whole, Libanios’ account shows little interest in preliminary tactics or identifiable individuals
and instead plunges his audience into the midst of the carnage with a list of anonymous
warriors’ gruesome death wounds (1. 7–9). Although we cannot rule out some Lukianic
embellishment, therefore, the nature of the passage strongly recalls that of historiographical
prose, which would suggest that Lukian was indebted, at least in part, to a historical
source.
130
The lack of extant historiographical references to the battle (except Appian’s passing
mention at Syriake 65) might challenge this conclusion, but the silence is unsurprising given
127
For example, the extensive detail in Diodoros’ description of the Battle of Paraitakene (19. 26–
34).
128
Hornblower 1981, 104: ‘The victor weeping over the vanquished is a motif of Hellenistic
historiography’, citing, for example, Hieronymos of Kardia’s account of Antigonos Gonatas’ tearful
reaction when shown Pyrrhos’ head (ἐδάκρυσεν, Plutarch Pyrrhos 34. 4). Also compare Antiochos
III’s reaction to the defeat of Achaios (δακρῦσαι, Polybios 8. 20. 9–10).
129
See Gibson 2008, 428–33.
130
A historical source is also suggested by Jacoby in FGH 2 (Zeitgeschichte. D: Kommentar zu
Nr. 106–261), 594; Scullard 1974, 122; Primo 2009, 257.
29
the fragmented nature of Hellenistic historiography, and it would be easy to posit various
possible sources. Pompeius Trogus’ history included ‘how the Gauls entered Asia and waged
war with king Antiochos and Bithynia’, which suggests that Antiochos’ battle against the
Galatians was part of the larger Hellenistic historiographical tradition.
131
One potential source
for Trogus (and also Lukian) would be Hieronymos of Kardia, as suggested by Scullard,
132
but his Antigonid background would not lead us to expect an account of Antiochos’ military
achievement as positive as that in the Zeuxis.
We might thus do better to look to the Seleukid court itself, where the Galatians appear
to have been a recurring topic of interest: Euphorion calls them Γαιζῆται (‘Land-searchers’)
and identifies them by the gold torque around their necks (fr. 42 ed. Lightfoot = fr. 38 CA, p.
37), while Hegesianax is said to have described their visit to Ilion in search of a stronghold
(BNJ 45 F 3).
133
In such a climate, it would be easy to imagine a historiographical account of
the ‘Elephant Battle’ written during Antiochos III’s reign (or perhaps even earlier) as a prose
counterpart to Simonides’ epic.
134
And if we wanted to identify a potential author,
Hegesianax himself would be a plausible candidate.
135
A Seleukid source for Lukian,
moreover, would also account for his narrative’s remaining historical ‘inaccuracies’: by
exaggerating the Galatians’ numbers, hybridity, and thus threat, Antiochos’ subsequent
victory would have appeared all the more glorious.
Despite our limited evidence, it thus seems likely that the ‘Elephant Battle’ was
subjected to historiographical treatment both within and beyond the Seleukid court. Lukian’s
account should therefore be traced back at least in part to a prose account of the battle,
although the subordinate influence of Simonides’ epic, either directly or via this prose source,
still remains possible. Given Lukian’s likely reliance on a prose historian, the absence of
131
Pompeius Trogus, Prologues 25: ut Galli transierunt in Asiam bellumque cum rege Antiocho et
Bithunia gesserunt. This is usually taken as a reference to the ‘Elephant Victory’ (Brodersen 1989,
195, n. 12; Tomaschitz 2002, 165, n. 685). For an alternative view, see Coşkun 2012, 61–62, n. 15.
132
Scullard 1974, 122.
133
For Seleukid writers, see Primo 2009, 53–108, especially 90–95 for Hegesianax, and Visscher
2020. If Hegesianax’s treatment of the Galatians occurred in his Troika, it is tempting to speculate
whether it involved an analogy between the Trojan War and the Gallic invasion.
134
For Antiochos III’s concern with, and reconstruction of, a legitimising ‘Seleukid past’, cf. Ma
1999, 26–33; Ceccarelli 2008; Visscher 2020, 154–99. On the historiographical focus of court
literature under Antiochos III, see also Primo 2009, 24–28; Kosmin 2018, 87–88.
135
Cf. Primo 2009, 95: ‘non può escludersi che Egesianatte, citando le peregrinazioni dei Galati,
cogliesse l’occasione per menzionare la vittoria di Antioco Soter contro i Galati nella “battaglia degli
elefanti”.’
30
analogies in his account could thus perhaps simply be explained as the result of a generic
difference between historiographical prose and celebratory verse.
Seleukid Ideology: An Orientalising Motif?
This ‘generic’ explanation, however, is unlikely to be the whole story. Given that Lukian’s
sources must include one, or some combination, of a Seleukid court historian, Simonides’
encomiastic epic and another Hellenistic historian (many of whose accounts seem to echo
Seleukid propaganda),
136
it is worth asking whether Lukian’s tale might also reflect aspects of
Seleukid ideology. Antiochos’ victory fits into the common pattern of the intelligent Greek
outwitting the barbarian,
137
but it is also remarkably similar to an episode in Book 1 of
Herodotos’ Histories, in which Kyros defeats Kroisos’ cavalry by exploiting his own novel
weapon: camels (Herodotos 1. 80). As in Lukian’s account, this stratagem is prompted by a
fear of the enemy’s numbers and cavalry and it is suggested to the king by a subordinate
officer (in this case, Harpagos the Mede: 1. 80. 2). Furthermore, it is the unfamiliar sight and
smell of the camels which sends the cavalry into disarray (1. 80. 5), just as the sight and
sound of the elephants panic the Galatian cavalry in the Zeuxis (10). In both accounts, it is
this innovative deployment of an untraditional ‘weapon’ which secures victory.
Given such similarities, it is tempting to identify a direct connection between these two
passages, Kyros’ former deeds acting as a kind of model and prototype for Antiochos’ own
successes.
138
However, upon closer inspection, both accounts appear to be individual
attestations of a larger pattern in which Eastern forces deploy exotic beasts against their
enemy. In Ktesias’ Persika, for example, the Assyrian Queen Semiramis used camels
disguised as elephants to terrify the troops of the Indian king Stabrobates. In the adaptation
by Diodoros of Sicily, it is the unfamiliar odour of the beasts which sends the Indian cavalry
into disarray (2. 19. 3). Elsewhere in Lukian’s works, meanwhile, the Parthians deploy
serpents against the Romans (How to Write History 29) and Dionysos routs the Indians and
136
A principal argument of Primo 2009, for example, in the cases of Nymphis of Herakleia
Pontike (pp. 111–12, 116) and Polybios: ‘Polibio sembra aver condensato una fonte apertamente
partigiana proveniente dagli ambienti della corte siriaca’ (p. 134).
137
Cf. Hall 1989, 122–23.
138
Cf. Levene 2011, 1–2 (summarising arguments from Levene 2010, 82–163) on how such
allusions in historiography invite us ‘to see not merely a relationship between texts, but
simultaneously a real-life connection between different events’, with the ‘implication that the later
people are actively aware of and responding to the actions of their predecessors’.
31
their elephants with his own secret weapon, his maenads (Dionysos 1–4), an ironic reversal of
the Zeuxis’ motif: here, the elephants do not rout the enemy, but are routed themselves.
139
This theme of terror caused by an unfamiliar beast thus clearly interested Lukian, as he
varied and redeployed the motif throughout his work.
140
However, the motif’s origins can be
traced back at least as far as the 5th century, given its occurrence in Ktesias and Herodotos.
Indeed, it may also have been exploited by Alexander the Great, who commemorated his
victory over Poros’ Indian troops (and 85 elephants) at the Battle of Hydaspes (326 BC) with
coins depicting the Macedonian king on horseback attacking a large elephant with two riders
(likely Poros and a mahout).
141
Most striking, however, is the manner in which this military
tactic is repeatedly associated with Eastern peoples and rulers: Parthians, Persians, Assyrians,
Indians and the exotic Dionysos. By attributing such a military manoeuvre to Antiochos,
Lukian’s account thus appears to present the Seleukid king as the latest in a series of Eastern
warriors, assimilating Antiochos’ victory into a common oriental pattern.
142
Such a presentation of Antiochos as an eastern warlord is striking and may at first seem
incompatible with the Seleukids’ own self-representation. Although they inhabited the former
territory of the Achaimenid empire, making such oriental associations natural,
143
the
Seleukids sometimes appear to have presented themselves as distinctly Greek rulers, just like
other Hellenistic kings: not only did they patronise culture and learning like the Ptolemies
and Attalids, participating in Greek games, making donations to Panhellenic sanctuaries, and
supporting poets and scholars such as Aratos and Euphorion, but they also on occasion
presented themselves as specifically ‘anti-Persian kings’, pointedly returning to Miletos and
Athens the statues and books which Xerxes had stolen.
144
139
The irony is heightened by the identical words in which the rout is described in both texts:
ἐκκλίναντες/ἐγκλίναντες σὺν οὐδενὶ κόσμῳ ἔφευγον (‘they turned and fled in utter disorder’, Zeuxis
10 = Dionysos 4).
140
See Anderson 1976 on Lukian’s ‘ingenious variations on a handful of themes’ (quotation from
p. 1).
141
Cf. Holt 2003. Alexander admittedly possessed an increasing number of elephants during his
reign and became associated with elephants in later Hellenistic iconography, but he never deployed
them in battle (cf. Curtius 9. 2. 21).
142
Admittedly, elephants were increasingly deployed in Hellenistic warfare (cf. Pausanias 1. 12. 3;
Scullard 1974, 76–145). However, Antiochos’ victory differs from the usual Hellenistic pattern in
which both sides employ elephants or the opposition is familiar with elephants and lays traps for them
(for example, at Megalopolis and Gaza). The closest parallel is Antigonos’ victory over Alketas in
319 (Diodoros 18. 44–45), yet Antigonos had a numerical advantage and his cavalry, not his
elephants, were the decisive factor.
143
Compare the Ptolemaic, Roman and Rhodian polemic discussed earlier at nn. 21–22.
144
Athens: Aulus Gellius 7. 17; Pausanias 1. 8. 5. Miletos: Pausanias 1. 16. 3; 8. 46. 3. See
Barbantani 2014 for the Seleukids’ Greekness.
32
Yet even so, the identities of Hellenistic kings were never monochrome: their self-
presentation constantly shifted to blend into local idioms,
145
and recent scholarship has
highlighted how the Seleukids did in fact interact with eastern traditions. The Seleukid
empire’s structural and political continuities with the Achaimenid past have long been
noted,
146
yet scholars have also begun to stress the Seleukids’ appropriation of Achaimenid
and oriental royal iconography in their self-representation. Hoover has demonstrated how
Seleukos I’s taurine iconography not only recalls the Greek god Dionysos, but also evokes
‘the context of imperial (Achaimenid) Zoroastrianism and popular Iranian religion’;
147
Kosmin has argued that the official discourse of the Seleukid court, reflected in the Ilion
decree for Antiochos I (OGIS 219. 2–12), displays the ‘influence of Achaemenid succession
traditions’, given the ‘similarity of the decree’s narrative and ideology to the great Behistun
inscription of the Persian king Darius I’;
148
and multiple scholars have explored how the
Seleukid coin type of Apollo seated on the omphalos holding a bow or arrow(s) (introduced
by Antiochos I) is situated within an Eastern tradition, following the iconography of
Achaimenid Darics and sigloi and anticipating later Arsakid coinage.
149
There is a growing
body of evidence, therefore, that points to the Seleukids’ active and purposeful exploitation
of eastern traditions in their own self-fashioning.
150
This appropriation of eastern ideology by Antiochos I is perhaps unsurprising
considering his eastern heritage and upbringing (his mother Apama was Iranian and he spent
fourteen years in the east as his father’s co-regent). But it is still less so given the fact that
5th-century Athens had already co-opted Persian discourses of luxury and power,
151
and even
Ptolemaic poetry appears to have exploited elements of Achaimenid ideology.
152
Given the
145
Ma 2003, 179–83. Cf. Lightfoot 2003, 390: the Seleukids ‘preferred to present themselves in
traditional ways and frameworks that were comprehensible to each local culture’.
146
Briant 1990; Sherwin-White and Kuhrt 1993; Engels 2011; 2017a, especially 23–100; 2017b.
For challenges to the significance of these continuities, see Tuplin 2008; 2014; Chrubasik 2016, 239–
43.
147
Hoover 2011, 197.
148
Kosmin 2014a, 86.
149
Iossif 2011; Erickson and Wright 2011.
150
See also Kosmin 2014b and K. Stevens 2014 on Antiochos I’s Borsippa Cylinder, and Erickson
2019 on Seleukid coinage.
151
Miller 1997, especially 218–42 on Perikles’ Odeon.
152
See Petrovic 2014 on how the emphasis in Poseidippos’ Lithika on subject lands’ raw materials
coming to Egypt echoes Persian imperial ideology. One could challenge her thesis by claiming that
this is a universal imperial topos and not distinctively Achaimenid, but the prominence of Persia in the
poems is striking: five of the 19 stones mentioned come from Persia, while Darius appears twice (4. 2,
8. 3 edd. Austin and Bastianini), alongside Mandene (4. 6). Could Poseidippos be self-consciously
highlighting the Ptolemies’ Achaimenid debt?
33
likely connection of Lukian’s narrative with Seleukid propaganda via a historian or
Simonides, therefore, it seems tempting to trace this orientalising presentation of the
‘Elephant Victory’ back to the Seleukids themselves,
153
as part of a larger cultural policy by
which they cast themselves as the true heirs not only of Alexander, but also of Eastern rulers,
especially the Achaimenids.
154
The frequent denigration of the Seleukids as ‘New Persians’
in Ptolemaic and other sources would then not be a spiteful invention, as often believed, but
rather a response to and subversion of the Seleukids’ own self-presentation.
155
In that case, Lukian’s failure to demonise the Galatians and Antiochos’ choice of an
elephant trophy would reflect key aspects of the Seleukid king’s self-presentation. As the
geographical heir of the Achaimenid Great King, Antiochos could not simply cast the
Galatians as barbaric Persian figures. Instead, on the evidence of Lukian, he appears to have
exploited his victory over them to emphasise his own cultural flexibility, as a Greek king who
had also mastered the military tactics of the East. The stark dichotomy constructed and
upheld by other kings and cities thus seems to have collapsed: Antiochos was rather the ideal
blend of East and West, the true successor to both Alexander the Great and the Achaimenid
Great King.
156
CONCLUSION
Hellenistic kings and cities conceptualised their clashes with the Galatians through a variety
of analogies, ranging from the distant world of myth to the historical recent past. In
commemorative art and literature, the Galatians were compared to numerous predecessors,
including the Amazons, Titans, Giants, Typhonians and – above all – the Persians. Yet in
153
It is worth stressing that this orientalising is a core element of the episode, based on Antiochos’
use of elephants, and thus cannot merely be attributed to Lukian’s embellishment of his sources.
154
Cf. Kosmin 2014a, 124–25 on how the Seleukids assimilated their territory to the Greek
concept of ‘Asia’, with all its Achaimenid associations. This policy might also be reflected indirectly
in Polybios 7. 15–18, where Antiochos III’s sacking of Sardis follows the same pattern as Kyros’
defeat of the identical city in the Herodotean episode we were discussing above (1. 84). In both
instances, a subordinate soldier spots an unguarded wall segment, which provides access to the city
(Polybios 7. 15. 2–10; Herodotos 1. 84. 2–4). Perhaps also significant is the fact that the Seleukids
attack the ‘Persian Gate’ (Polybios 7. 17. 6), a name which potentially recalls Kyros’ former attack on
the city. I thank Boris Chrubasik for drawing my attention to this parallel.
155
Cf. Almagor 2019, 94–98. For a similar subversion of Seleukid ideology, compare Kosmin’s
suggestion (2014a, 218) that Jewish sources’ ‘hostile assimilation of Antiochos IV to Nebuchadnezzar
II’ might actually reinterpret a ‘positive identification promoted by the Seleucid court’.
156
Indeed, if Alexander’s dream appearance in Lukian’s A Slip of the Tongue in Greeting (see
above, n. 101) can be traced back to Seleukid propaganda surrounding the ‘Elephant Battle’, the
Seleukids would also appear to have stressed Alexander’s legitimising precedent in their
commemoration of the victory.
34
Alexandrian poetry, they could also be employed allegorically as the negative side of a larger
metapoetic dichotomy, while in a Seleukid context the traditional antithesis appears to have
collapsed, resulting in Antiochos I’s representation as a modern-day Graeco-oriental
monarch.
As we have seen, there had already been a long tradition of employing such analogies,
especially in 5th-century Athens, where the Persian Wars had been celebrated with repeated
comparisons to the Trojan Wars. Yet with both Hellenistic approaches, perhaps the most
immediate inspiration came from Alexander the Great. Not only was he the great victor over
the Persians (the Πέρσαισι βαρὺς θεός, Theokritos Idyll 17. 19) and apparently already
connected with the Gigantomachy,
157
but he was also the first man to rule both East and
West, a key model for the Seleukids’ cultural hybridity.
The Galatian Wars were thus memorialised as the latest chapter in the long clash
between chaos and order, and they could even be recalled centuries later as a display of
Greekness: in threatening potential plunderers of his sanctuary-tomb with the punishment
suffered by the Galatians at Delphi, the Late Hellenistic king Antiochos I of Kommagene
subscribed to the same chain of analogies.
158
Ultimately, however, it was the Persian Wars
that would live longest in the Greek cultural memory, recurring as a parallel for
contemporary events in encomia of even the 5th and 6th centuries AD.
159
The Galatians were
thus eventually consumed by the larger analogical dichotomy of which they had formed a
part, as their menace and threat became consigned to the annals of history.
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Figures
Fig. 1: Relief Stele from Kyzikos, Dedicated by the Strategos and Phylarchs, ca. 277/6 BC.
Istanbul, Archaeological Museum, 564 (Mendel 858). Photograph: W. Schiele 1968, Neg.
D-DAI-IST-68-3. With permission.
49
Marble; height: 0.70 m. Herakles – naked and with raised club – attacks a collapsing
Galatian warrior who holds a sword; his oval shield lies to the right and Herakles’ lionskin
hangs from a tree above it.
Fig. 2: Detail from the East Frieze of the Pergamene Great Altar, Exterior Relief, ca. 180–160
BC. Apollo stands over his defeated opponent. Berlin, Pergamonmuseum;
Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Preussischer Kulturbesitz.
Photograph: CoDArchLab, www.arachne.uni-koeln.de, FA-SPerg003746-04. With
permission.
The defeated opponent reclines in the middle of the scene in a pose similar to the Naples
Dying Gaul and Capitoline Dying Trumpeter.
Fig. 3: Naples Dying Gaul. Roman marble copy of Pergamene original from ca. 200 BC.
Naples National Museum, 6015. Photograph: Neg. D-DAI-ROM-93.545. With
permission.
Marble copy; height: 0.57 m; length: 1.07 m. Roman replica of a figure from Attalos I’s
dedication on the Athenian Acropolis.
Fig. 4: Capitoline Dying Trumpeter. Roman marble copy of Pergamene original from ca.
230–200 BC. Rome, Capitoline Museum, 747. Photograph: Singer, Neg. D-DAI-ROM-
70.2116. With permission.
Marble copy; height: 0.93 m; length: 1.85 m. Replica of one of the ‘large’ Attalid
Galatians, likely dedicated at Pergamon or Delphi.