Galatia - Roman and Christian Galatia

Roman and Christian Galatia

Upon the death of Deiotarus, the Kingdom of Galatia was given to Amyntas, an auxiliary commander in the Roman army of Brutus and Cassius who gained the favor of Mark Antony. However, on his death in 25 BC, Galatia was incorporated by Octavian Augustus into the Roman Empire, becoming a Roman province. Near his capital Ancyra (modern Ankara), Pylamenes, the king's heir, rebuilt a temple of the Phrygian god Men to venerate Augustus (the Monumentum Ancyranum), as a sign of fidelity. It was on the walls of this temple in Galatia that the major source for the Res Gestae of Augustus were preserved for modernity. Few of the provinces proved more enthusiastically loyal to Rome. The Galatians also practised a form of Romano-Celtic polytheism, common in Celtic lands.

During his second missionary journey, St. Paul of Tarsus, accompanied by Silas and Timothy (Acts 16:6), visited the "region of Galatia," where he was detained by sickness (Galatians 4:13).

Josephus related the Biblical figure Gomer to Galatia (or perhaps to Gaul in general): "For Gomer founded those whom the Greeks now call Galatians, but were then called Gomerites." Others have related Gomer to Cimmerians.

The Galatians were still speaking the Galatian language (Gaulish) in the time of St. Jerome (347–420 AD), who wrote that the Galatians of Ancyra and the Treveri of Trier (in what is now the German Rhineland) spoke the same language (Comentarii in Epistolam ad Galatos, 2.3, composed c. 387).

In an administrative reorganisation about 386–95 two new provinces succeeded it, Galatia Prima and Galatia Secunda or Salutaris, which included part of Phrygia. The fate of the Galatian people is a subject of some uncertainty, but they seem ultimately to have been absorbed into the Greek-speaking populations of Anatolia.

There was a short-lived 11th century attempt to re-establish an independent Galatia by Roussel de Bailleul.