Description of Greece

​Marching forward, therefore, from Heracleia—for he had learned from deserters about those who had assembled at Pylae from each city—he looked down upon the Greek force and began the battle on the following day at the rising of the sun, neither having a Greek seer nor using his native sacrifices, if indeed there is any Celtic divination. Thereupon the Greeks advanced in silence and in order; and when they came to close quarters, the infantry did not charge so far out of their line as to throw their own phalanx into confusion, while the light-armed, remaining in their places, discharged their javelins and whatever was shot from bows or slung from slings.

​The cavalry proved useless to both sides, since the place behind Pylae was not only narrow, but also smooth owing to the natural rock, and for the most part continually slippery because of the water-currents. For the Galatians, their defensive equipment was rather weak—for they had only their native shields, and no other armor served them as a protection for the body—and even more they were lacking in experience in matters of war.

​But they advanced against their opponents with rage and fury without any reason, like wild beasts; and neither did madness leave those still breathing though they were being cut open by battle-axes or swords, nor did those who were pierced through by arrows and javelins diminish their fury as long as their life remained. Some even pulled the spears, with which they had been struck, out of their wounds and threw them at the Greeks, or used them in hand-to-hand combat.

​In the meantime, the Athenians on the triremes, with difficulty indeed and not without danger, nevertheless sailed along through the mud which occupies most of the sea, and bringing their ships as close as possible to the barbarians, plied them on their flanks with all kinds of missiles and arrows. Since the Celts were suffering beyond description and, being in a narrow space, were doing little harm but suffering double and fourfold, their commanders signaled to them to retreat to the camp. But as they turned back in disorder and with no discipline, many were trampled underfoot by one another, and many fell into the marsh and disappeared beneath the mud, so that a loss no less befell them as they retreated than had occurred at the height of the battle.

​On this day, the Attic force surpassed the Greeks in bravery; and of the Athenians themselves, Cydias proved the most valiant, being young in age and then entering a contest of war for the first time. When he was killed by the Galatians, his relatives dedicated his shield to Zeus of Freedom, and the inscription was: “Still longing for the young youth of Cydias, I am the shield of a glorious man, an offering to Zeus, through which for the very first time he then stretched his left arm, when impetuous Ares raged against the Galatian.”

​This, indeed, had been inscribed before Sulla and his associates removed, along with other things at Athens, the shields in the portico of Zeus of Freedom. But at that time, at Thermopylae, the Greeks after the battle were burying their own dead and despoiling the barbarians, while the Galatians neither sent heralds to ask for the recovery of their dead, nor did they care whether they obtained burial in the earth or were devoured by wild beasts and by whatever birds are hostile to the dead.

​And that they were negligent about the burial of those who died, there were, in my opinion, two reasons that convinced them: to strike terror into the enemy, and because pity for the dead is not customary with them. In the battle, forty of the Greek force died, but it was not possible to discover accurately the number of the barbarians, for a great part of them disappeared beneath the mud.