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Blucium and Peium: The Galatian Forts of King Deiotarus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Stephen Mitchell
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Extract

The topography and historical geography of Galatia, the area of central Anatolia which extended roughly from the modern Sivrihissar to Yozgat and which was occupied from the 3rd century B.C. by three Celtic tribes, is a subject which has remained obstinately obscure, despite its interest to Classical archaeologists and historians and to Celtic scholars. Progress in fixing the topography of the region after it became a Roman province in 25 B.C. has been made more readily, mainly thanks to two factors: first, the existence of an elaborate and important road system whose remains can still be traced on the ground, and second, the occasional find of inscriptions containing place names by which sites can be identified. No such assistance is available for the pre-Roman period, and, until comparatively recently, only three names could be placed on the map of independent Galatia without an accompanying question mark, Ancyra, Pessinus and Tavium which, under the Roman domination, became the capitals of the three Celtic tribes, the Tectosages, the Tolistobogii and the Trocmi. It was impossible to identify the other Galatian strongholds, which had disappeared from history after the organisation of the Roman province, with places named in the literary sources, even when their traces could be identified on the ground.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anatolian Studies , Volume 24 , December 1974 , pp. 61 - 75
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute at Ankara 1974

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References

1 TTAED II (1934), 33 fGoogle Scholar.

2 Coupry, J.. Rév. Arch. 6e sér. VI (1935), 142 fGoogle Scholar.

3 Coupry, loc. cit.; Cicero, , ad Att. V.17.3Google Scholar; 21.2; Phil. XI.31; Pro Rege Deiot., 36.

4 Strabo XII.5.2, 567.

5 Pro Rege Deiot., 17, 21.

6 Cf. Anderson, J. G. C., JHS XIX (1899), 94Google Scholar. He wrongly located the forts on the road from Ancyra towards Pessinus, at Assarlıkaya Hissar and Basrı respectively. See n. 11.

7 CRAI 1935, 42–4Google Scholar.

8 Rév. Arch. 6e sér. VI (1935), 133 fGoogle Scholar.

9 Rév. Arch. 6e sér. IX (1937), 86–8Google Scholar.

10 A good summary of the evidence then available, reaching the same conclusion as Coupry, loc. cit., is given by Magie, D., Roman Rule in Asia Minor II (Princeton, 1950), 1266Google Scholar.

11 A Classical Map of Asia Minor, published by the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, 1957Google Scholar. See n. 6.

12 JHS XIX (1899), 63–4Google Scholar.

13 I was alone at the time and equipped for surveying only with a 2 m. steel tape and a pace measuring approximately one metre. The sketch plan, therefore, should be regarded as entirely provisional. I have to thank A. W. McNicoll for help in describing the details of the fortifications.

14 Pro Rege Deiot., loc. cit.

15 XLII. 49.

16 Bell. Alex., 78.

17 A point also made by Ruge, W., RE XIX, 68–9Google Scholars.v. Peion.

18 He arrived at Nicaea omnium exspectatione celerius, “sooner than anyone expected”, Bell. Alex., loc. cit.

19 Vit. St. Theod. (ed. Festugière, A. J., Brussels 1970), 118.2Google Scholar.

20 Emended to Λαγανείνη by Ruge, W., RE XII, 454Google Scholars.v. Lagania.

21 The identification was suggested by David French, who has recently established the course of this section of the “Pilgrim's road”.

22 Anderson, loc. cit., identified the fort with the mutatio Ipetobrogen, placed by the Itinerarium Burdigalense on the “Pilgrim's road” between Lagania and Mnizus, and emended the name to read Petobriga. He also suggested that Petobriga was identical with Peton, printed in the Latin translation of the life of St. Theodore where the Greek text, discussed above, reads Πεῶν. This demands some comment. (1) The manuscripts of the Itinerarium Burdigalense at this point (574.11) read mutatio Ipetobrogen (with the initial I inserted above the line by the original copyist), or mutatio Petobrogen (see the edition of Cuntz, O., Itineraria Romana, volumen prius (Leipzig 1929))Google Scholar. The emendation to Petobriga, thus restoring the common Celtic suffix -brig, meaning castle or fort, is plausible but not certain. Another Celtic element “brog”, meaning field, country or district, is also widely attested (see Holder, A., Altceltische Sprachsatz I (Leipzig 1896), 619Google Scholar.) (2) The reading Peton in the life of St. Theodore is now outdated by the publication of the original text in a good edition, which shows that the name in question was Πεῶν, and that the Latin version was probably based on a misreading of the Greek. The Latin text cannot be used as independent evidence for the hypothesis that Petobriga was identical with Peon (Peton) and, therefore, with Peium. (3) The original identification of the fort with the mutatio was based on the belief that the “Pilgrim's road” ran close by to the south of it. Recent work (see n. 20) has shown that the road ran much further south of the fort than Anderson believed, and this lessens, if it does not exclude, the possibility that the mutatio took its name from the fort.

23 For the army of Deiotarus see Cicero, , ad Att. VI. 1.14Google Scholar; and Bell. Alex., 34.

24 For the fortifications of Isaura, see Strabo XII.6.3, 569; Swoboda, E., Keil, J. and Knoll, F., Denkmäler aus Lykaonien, Pisidien und Isaurien (Leipzig 1935), 120 fGoogle Scholar.

25 OGIS no. 347.