Keltos

Galates (Greek Γαλάτης ) or Keltos (Greek Κέλτος ) In Greek mythology, the eponymous hero of the Celts.

The descent of the Gauls

The descent of the Gauls by a eponymous hero first appears in Diodorus ( Diod.sic. V 24) reported that the demi-god Hercules had come after his fight with the giant Geryon in Hispania by the land of the Celts, where he daughter a native princes had seduced, and he had thus become the father of the heroes Galates from which descended the people of the Celts. A similar story is told Parthenius of Nicaea ( Parthenius erto. 30) after the Hercules with a princess named Keltine, daughter of King Bretannos, have begotten a son named Keltos.

Confirmation of the existence of such a legend by Ammianus Marcellinus ( Amm.Marcell. XV, 9) would mention that this variant of Celtic descent legend in his time was the most common and frequently represented in Gaul in writing and pictures.

A different variant is reported by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, was after Hercules with Asterope, a daughter of Atlas, two sons, Keltos and Iber, the ancestors of the Celts and Iberians, begotten.

The origin of the Galatians

Timaeus of Tauromenion, as Callimachus in a fragmentary surviving poem mentioned as first a derivation of the Anatolian Galatians from a progenitor named Galates or Gallus (hence the name of the country Γαλατία ), said to have been a son of the Nereid Galatea and the Cyclops. A similar variant tells Appian ( Appian, hist novel. 10,1,2 ), after the nymph Galateie had three sons, Keltos, galas and Illyros, which have become the ancestors of the Celts, Illyrians, and Galatians. Notwithstanding this genealogy mentioned Eustathios a derivation of the Galatians by the god Apollo.

Reception

The interpretation of the ancient ethnographies to the origin of the Celts are very controversial. They are usually seen as typical examples of mythological ethnogenesis, the strange peoples, depending on the judgment of a culture as " barbaric" ( by descent from the Cyclops ) or " civilizable " try to represent ( by descent from a related hero or god). Others, however, suggest quite the reception of a local Celtic myth, which was "translated " by a " interpretatio graeca " or " interpretatio romana " in Greek and Roman mythology. Although in the Middle Ages dive with the Irish and Welsh similar ideas of eponymous ancestors of, so for the Gaels figures like Feinius Farsaidh, Goidel glass, Miled or Donn, for the Kymren Britus (or Britto, Prydein ), or for the Picts Cruithne, but eponymous heroes were generally widespread in the ancient world and the ancient ethnography medieval historians quite familiar, and probably also a role model. However, it was generally in contrast to the lineage of ancient deities preferred a descent from Noah or the Trojans in the Christian Middle Ages. The parallels of the insular Celtic mythology to the eponymous heroes of ancient ethnography are thus suitable only very limited evidence for an authentic Celtic descent Sage as Gaius Julius Caesar reported in his De bello Gallico Dispater from the Celts. Ammianus Marcellinus Note on the distribution of known by Diodorus and Parthenos, descent from Hercules, however, shows that even if the origin of the legend should have been Hellenistic, he was, however, adapted in late antiquity by the Gauls themselves.