François Guizot - History of France from the Earliest Times (Vol. 1-6)

Like all barbarians, they, both for pleasure and on principle, added insolence to ferocity. Their Brenn, or most famous chieftain, whom the Latins and Greeks call Brennus, dragged in his train Macedonian prisoners, short, mean, and with shaven heads, and exhibiting them beside Gallic warriors, tall, robust, long-haired, adorned with chains of gold, said, “This is what we are, that is what our enemies are.”

Ptolemy the Thunderbolt, King of Macedonia, received with haughtiness their first message requiring of him a ransom for his dominions if he wished to preserve peace. “Tell those who sent you,” he replied to the Gallic deputation, “to lay down their arms and give up to me their chieftains. I will then see what peace I can grant them.” On the return of the deputation, the Gauls were moved to laughter. “He shall soon see,” said they, “whether it was in his interest or our own that we offered him peace.” And, indeed, in the first engagement, neither the famous Macedonian phalanx, nor the elephant he rode, could save King Ptolemy; the phalanx was broken, the elephant riddled with javelins, the king himself taken, killed, and his head marched about the field of battle on the top of a pike.

Macedonia was in consternation; there was a general flight from the open country, and the gates of the towns were closed. “The people,” says an historian, “cursed the folly of King Ptolemy, and invoked the names of Philip and Alexander, the guardian deities of their land.”

Three years later, another and a more formidable invasion came bursting upon Thessaly and Greece. It was, according to the unquestionably exaggerated account of the ancient historians, two hundred thousand strong, and commanded by that famous, ferocious, and insolent Brennus mentioned before. His idea was to strike a blow which should simultaneously enrich the Gauls and stun the Greeks. He meant to plunder the temple at Delphi, the most venerated place in all Greece, whither flowed from century to century all kinds of offerings, and where, no doubt, enormous treasure was deposited. Such was, in the opinion of the day, the sanctity of the place, that, on the rumor of the projected profanation, several Greeks essayed to divert the Gallic Brenn himself, by appealing to his superstitious fears; but his answer was, “The gods have no need of wealth; it is they who distribute it to men.”

All Greece was moved. The nations of the Peloponnese closed the isthmus of Corinth by a wall. Outside the isthmus, the Beeotians, Phocidians, Locrians, Megarians, and AEtolians formed a coalition under the leadership of the Athenians; and, as their ancestors had done scarcely two hundred years before against Xerxes and the Persians, they advanced in all haste to the pass of Thermopylae, to stop there the new barbarians.

And for several days they did stop them; and instead of three hundred heroes, as of yore in the case of Leonidas and his Spartans, only forty Greeks, they say, fell in the first engagement. ‘Amongst them was a young Athenian, Cydias by name, whose shield was hung in the temple of Zeus the savior, at Athens, with this inscription:—

THIS SHIELD, DEDICATED TO ZEUS, IS THAT OF A VALIANT MAN,

CYDIAS. IT STILL BEWAILS ITS

YOUNG MASTER. FOR THE FIRST TIME

HE BARE IT ON HIS LEFT ARM

WHEN TERRIBLE ARES CRUSHED

THE GAULS.

But soon, just as in the case of the Persians, traitors guided Brennus and his Gauls across the mountain-paths; the position of Thermopylae was turned; the Greek army owed its safety to the Athenian galleys; and by evening of the same day the barbarians appeared in sight of Delphi.

Brennus would have led them at once to the assault. He showed them, to excite them, the statues, vases, cars, monuments of every kind, laden with gold, which adorned the approaches of the town and of the temple: “ ’Tis pure gold—massive gold,” was the news he had spread in every direction. But the very cupidity he provoked was against his plan; for the Gauls fell out to plunder. He had to put off the assault until the morrow. The night was passed in irregularities and orgies.

The Greeks, on the contrary, prepared with ardor for the fight. Their enthusiasm was intense. Those barbarians, with their half-nakedness, their grossness, their ferocity, their ignorance, and their impiety, were revolting. They committed murder and devastation like dolts. They left their dead on the field, without burial. They engaged in battle without consulting priest or augur. It was not only their goods, but their families, their life, the honor of their country, and the sanctuary of their religion, that the Greeks were defending, and they might rely on the protection of the gods. The oracle of Apollo had answered, “I and the white virgins will provide for this matter.” The people surrounded the temple, and the priests supported and encouraged the people. During the night small bodies of AEtolians, Amphisseans, and Phocidians arrived one after another. Four thousand men had joined within Delphi, when the Gallic bands, in the morning, began to mount the narrow and rough incline which led up to the town. The Greeks rained down from above a deluge of stones and other missiles. The Gauls recoiled, but recovered themselves. The besieged fell back on the nearest streets of the town, leaving open the approach to the temple, upon which the barbarians threw themselves. The pillage of the shrines had just commenced when the sky looked threatening; a storm burst forth, the thunder echoed, the rain fell, the hail rattled. Readily taking advantage of this incident, the priests and the augurs sallied from the temple clothed in their sacred garments, with hair dishevelled and sparkling eyes, proclaiming the advent of the god: “ ’Tis he! we saw him shoot athwart the temple’s vault, which opened under his feet; and with him were two virgins, who issued from the temples of Artemis and Athena. We saw them with our eyes. We heard the twang of their bows, and the clash of their armor.” Hearing these cries and the roar of the tempest, the Greeks dash on—the Gauls are panic-stricken, and rush headlong down the bill. The Greeks push on in pursuit. Rumors of fresh apparitions are spread; three heroes, Hyperochus, Laodocus, and Pyrrhus, son of Achilles, have issued from their tombs hard by the temple, and are thrusting at the Gauls with their lances. The rout was speedy and general; the barbarians rushed to the cover of their camp; but the camp was attacked next morning by the Greeks from the town and by re-enforcements from the country places. Brennus and the picked warriors about him made a gallant resistance, but defeat was a foregone conclusion. Brennus was wounded, and his comrades bore him off the field. The barbarian army passed the whole day in flight. During the ensuing night a new access of terror seized them they again took to flight, and four days after the passage of Thermopylae some scattered bands, forming scarcely a third of those who had marched on Delphi, rejoined the division which had remained behind, some leagues from the town, in the plains watered by the Cephissus. Brennus summoned his comrades “Kill all the wounded and me,” said he; “burn your cars; make Cichor king; and away at full speed.” Then he called for wine, drank himself drunk, and stabbed himself. Cichor did cut the throats of the wounded, and traversed, flying and fighting, Thessaly and Macedonia; and on returning whence they had set out, the Gauls dispersed, some to settle at the foot of a neighboring mountain under the command of a chieftain named Bathanat or Baedhannatt, i.e., son of the wild boar; others to march back towards their own country; the greatest part to resume the same life of incursion and adventure. But they changed the scene of operations. Greece, Macedonia, and Thrace were exhausted by pillage, and made a league to resist. About 278 B.C. the Gauls crossed the Hellespont and passed into Asia Minor. There, at one time in the pay of the kings of Bithynia, Pergamos, Cappadocia, and Syria, or of the free commercial cities which were struggling against the kings, at another carrying on wars on their own account, they wandered for more than thirty years, divided into three great hordes, which parcelled out the territories among themselves, overran and plundered them during the fine weather, intrenched themselves during winter in their camp of cars, or in some fortified place, sold their services to the highest bidder, changed masters according to interest or inclination, and by their bravery became the terror of these effeminate populations and the arbiters of these petty states.