ome time after 220 B.C.)
they were annihilated by the Thracians. The main body of the Gauls who
had marched to the Hellespont crossed it under the leadership of
Leonnorius and Lutarius. Straightway they overran the greater part of
Asia Minor, and laid under tribute all west of Taurus, even the Seleucid
kings. At last Attila, king of Pergamum, defeated them in a series of
battles commemorated on the Pergamene sculptures, and henceforth they
were confined to a strip of land in the interior of Asia Minor, the
Galatia of history. Their three tribes--Trocmi, Tolistobogians and
Tectosages--submitted to Rome (189 B.C.), but they remained autonomous
till the death of their king Amyntas, when Augustus erected Galatia into
a province. Their descendants were probably the "foolish Galatians" to
whom St Paul wrote (see GALATIA).

Ancient writers spoke of all these Gauls as Cimbri, and identified them
with the Cimmerians of earlier date, who in Homeric times dwelt on the
ocean next to the Laestrygones, in a region of wintry gloom, but where
the sun set not in summer. Nor was it only towards the south and the
Hellespont that the Celtic tide ever set. They passed eastward to the
Danube mouth and into southern Russia, as far as the Sea of Azov,
mingling with the Scythians, as is proved by the name Celto-scyths.
Mithradates VI. of Pontus seems to have negotiated with them to gain
their aid against Rome, and Bituitus, a Gallic mercenary, was with him
at his death.

The Celts had continually moved westwards also. The Belgae, who were
Cimbric in origin, had spread across the Rhine and given their name to
all northern France and Belgium (_Gallia Belgica_). Many of these tribes
sent colonies over into south-eastern Britain, where they had been
masters for some two centuries when Caesar invaded the island (see
BRITAIN). But there is evidence that from the Bronze Age there had been
settlers in northern Britain who were broad-skulled and cremated their
dead, a practice which had arisen in south Germany in the early Bronze
Age or still earlier. It is not unlikely that, as tradition states,
there were incursions of Celts from central Gaul into Ireland during the
general Celtic unrest in the 6th century B.C. It is certain that at a
later period invaders from the continent, bringing with them the later
Iron Age culture, commonly called La Tene, which had succeeded that of
Hallstatt, had settled in Ireland. Not only are relics of La Tene
culture fo