Galates

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Galates ( Greek  Γαλάτης ) or Keltos (Greek Κέλτος ) is the eponymous hero of the Celts in Greek mythology .

The descent of the Gauls

The descent of the Gauls from an eponymous hero first appears in Diodorus ( Diod.sic. V 24 ), who reports that the demigod Hercules came through the land of the Celts after his fight with the giant Geryoneus in Hispania, where his daughter came to him seduced a local prince and thus became the father of the hero Galates, from whom the Celts descended. Parthenios of Nicaea ( Parthenios erto. 30 ) tells a similar story after Hercules fathered a son named Celtos with a princess named Keltine, daughter of King Bretannus.

The existence of such a legend is confirmed by Ammianus Marcellinus ( Amm.Marcell. XV, 9 ) who mentions that this variant of the Celtic ancestry legend was the most widespread in his time and was often represented in Gaul in writing and images.

A different variant is reported by Dionysius of Halicarnassus , according to whom Hercules and Asterope , a daughter of Atlas , had two sons, Celtos and Iber, the ancestors of the Celts and Iberians .

The Lineage of the Galatians

Timaeus of Tauromenion , as well as Callimachus in a fragmentary poem, are the first to mention a descent of the Asian Minor Galatians from a progenitor named Galates or Gallus (hence the country name Γαλατία), who is said to have been a son of the Nereid Galateia and the Cyclops . Appian tells a similar variant ( Appian, hist. Roman. 10,1,2 ), according to which the nymph Galateie had three sons, Celtos, Galas and Illyros, who became the progenitors of the Celts, Galatians and Illyrians. Deviating from this genealogy, Eustathios mentions a descent of the Galatians from the god Apollo .

reception

The interpretation of ancient ethnographies on the origin of the Celts is very controversial. Mostly they are seen as typical examples of mythological ethnogenesis, which, depending on the assessment of the respective culture, try to portray alien peoples as "barbaric" (by descent from the Cyclops) or "civilizable" (by descent from a related hero or god). Others, however, certainly suspect the reception of a native Celtic myth, which was "translated" into Greek and Roman mythology by an "Interpretatio Graeca" or "Interpretatio Romana". In the Middle Ages, although similar ideas of eponymous ancestors of diving in the Irish and Welsh, so for the Gaels characters like Fénius Farsaid , Goidel glass , Miled or Donn , for Kymren Britus (or Britto, Prydein), or the Picts Cruithne but eponymous heroes were generally widespread in antiquity and ancient ethnography was well known to medieval historians and probably also a model. However, in the Christian Middle Ages, a descent from Noah or the Trojans was generally preferred in contrast to the descent from ancient deities . The parallels between island Celtic mythology and the eponymous heroes of ancient ethnography are therefore only partially suitable as evidence of an authentic Celtic legend of descent, as Gaius Iulius Caesar reports in his work De bello Gallico of the Dispater of the Celts. Ammianus Marcellinus' note on the spread of the Hercules descent known from Diodorus and Parthenus shows that even if the origin of the saga was Hellenistic, it was adapted by the Gauls themselves in late antiquity.

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Helmut Birkhan: Celts. Attempt at a complete representation of their culture. P. 47.