Pausanias Analysis

After advancing from Heracleia—for he had been informed by deserters about the contingents gathered at Thermopylae from each city—he treated the Greek force with contempt and began preparations for battle at sunrise the next day. He had neither a Greek diviner nor did he conduct rites according to local custom, if indeed a Celtic divination exists at all. Here the Greeks advanced silently and in good order. Once they engaged, their infantry did not rush forward from the line far enough to disrupt their own phalanx, and the light-armed troops kept their positions, sending forth javelins and whatever missiles they had from their bows or slings.

The cavalry of both sides proved useless, not merely because the terrain beyond the Gates was narrow, but also because it consisted largely of smooth, exposed rock, naturally polished and slippery from the streams that continually flowed across it. The Galatians, moreover, had inferior protective equipment, carrying only their native shields for defense and having no other armor to shelter their bodies; and even more significantly, they lacked sufficient experience in warfare.

They advanced against their enemies with rage and fury, moving forward without any calculation, just like wild beasts. Neither when they were being hacked by axes nor when cut down by swords did their madness leave those who still breathed; nor did their anger diminish, though pierced by arrows and spears, as long as life remained in them. Some even pulled out from their wounds the spears by which they had been struck, hurling them back at the Greeks or fighting with them still in their hands.

Meanwhile, the Athenians upon their triremes, though with difficulty and not without danger, managed nevertheless to sail along through the mud—that extends very far across the sea—and positioned their ships as close as possible to the barbarians, assailing them from the flanks with missiles of every kind, as well as with arrows. The Celts suffered grievously, far beyond account, and, constrained in a narrow place, could do but little harm, while receiving twofold and fourfold damage in return. Therefore, their leaders signaled them to retreat to the camp; but in their disorderly withdrawal, with total lack of discipline, many were trampled to death by their own comrades, while many others, falling into the swamp, disappeared beneath the mud, so that their losses during the retreat were no fewer than those sustained in the height of the fighting itself.

On this day the Athenians surpassed all the other Greeks in valor. Among the Athenians themselves, Cydias proved especially brave—a young man in age, then entering his first battle. After he was slain by the Gauls, his relatives dedicated his shield to Zeus Eleutherios, bearing the following inscription: Longing indeed for the youthful bloom of Cydias, the shield of that illustrious man, dedicated to Zeus— on my arm first he strapped me, when fierce Ares flared against the Galatian foe.

This inscription had already been engraved before Sulla's companions removed other shields from Athens—including those in the Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios. At that time, after the battle at Thermopylae, the Greeks were burying their own dead and stripping spoils from the barbarians, but the Gauls neither sent heralds asking for the recovery of their muertos, nor showed any concern about whether their corpses would rest in earth or become food for wild beasts and birds hostile to the fallen.

Two reasons seem to me to have persuaded them to be negligent in burying their dead: first, to strike terror in their enemies, and second, because compassion for those who have died is not usual among them. In this battle, forty Greeks fell, but it was impossible to ascertain accurately the number of barbarians killed, since many had disappeared into the mud.