Galatia History

This is a short sample of the history of Galatia.     This comes by way of Wikipedia.   Roman and Christian Galatia On the death of the third king Amyntas in 25 BC, however, Galatia was incorporated by Octavian Augustus in the Roman empire, though near his capital Ancyra (modern Ankara) Pylamenes, the king's heir, rebuilt a temple of the Phrygian goddess 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 practiced a form of Romano-Celtic polytheism, common in Celtic lands. During his second missionary journey Paul, accompanied by Silas and Timothy (Acts 16:6), visited the "region of Galatia," where he was detained by sickness (Epistle to Galatians 4:13), and had thus the longer opportunity of preaching to them the gospel. On his third journey he went over "all the country of Galatia and Phrygia in order" (Acts 18:23). During the journeys of Paul he was received with enthusiasm in Galatia. In Acts, xvi, 6 and xviii, 23:"And they went through the Phrygian and Galatian region" (ten phrygian kai Galatiken choran) and "he departed and went through the Galatian region and Phrygia" (ten Galatiken choran kai phrygian). The Galatians were fickle; at Lystra the multitude could scarcely be restrained from sacrificing to Paul (because they assumed he was a god); shortly afterwards they stoned him and left him for dead. Crescens was sent thither by Paul toward the close of his life (2 Timothy 4:10). Josephus related the biblical figure Gomer to Galatia. "For Gomer founded those whom the Greeks now call Galatians, [Galls,] but were then called Gomerites." Antiquities of the Jews, I:6. Although others have related Gomer to Cimmerians. The Galatians were still speaking the Celtic Galatian language in the time of St. Jerome (347–420 CE), who wrote that the Galatians of Ancyra and the Treveri of Trier (in what is now the German Rhineland) spoke the same language. In an administrative reorganization 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- and/or Turkish-speaking populations of west-central Anatolia.     Go HERE for even earlier history of Galatia!