Galatia

Galatia
Ancient Region of Anatolia
Location of Galatia in Anatolia
Location	Central Anatolia
State existed	280–64 BC
Successive languages	Galatian, Greek
Achaemenid satrapy	Cappadocia
Roman province	Galatia

Ancient Galatia (/ɡəˈleɪʃə/; Greek: Γαλατία, Turkish: Galatlar) was an area in the highlands of central Anatolia (Ankara, Çorum, Yozgat Province) in modern Turkey. Galatia was named for the immigrant Gauls from Thrace (cf. Tylis), who settled here and became its ruling caste in the 3rd century BC, following the Gallic invasion of the Balkans in 279 BC. It has been called the "Gallia" of the East, Roman writers calling its inhabitants Galli (Gauls or Celts).

Galatia was bounded on the north by Bithynia and Paphlagonia, on the east by Pontus and Cappadocia, on the south by Cilicia and Lycaonia, and on the west by Phrygia. Its capital was Ancyra (i.e. Ankara, today the capital of modern Turkey).

Seeing something of a Hellenized savage in the Galatians, Francis Bacon and other Renaissance writers called the inhabitants "Gallo-Graeci" or "Gauls settled among the Greeks", and the country "Gallo-Graecia", as had the 3rd-century AD Latin historian Justin. The more usual term in Antiquity is Ἑλληνογαλάται (Hellēnogalátai) of Diodorus Siculus' Bibliotheca historica v.32.5, in a passage that is translated "...and were called Gallo-Graeci because of their connection with the Greeks", identifying Galatia in the Greek East as opposed to Gallia in the West.