madviking
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Shlisselburg
Cool ancient names of cities or regions
- Thread starter Kyriakos
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Pangur Bán
Deconstructed
Scotland in the 11th century was divided into two or three political communities, the Gall-Gaidhel (centred around Ayrshire), Muireb (around Inverness) and Alba (around Perth). The latter two were Latinized as 'Moravia' and 'Albania', very confusing to eastern European historians!
sydhe
King of Kongs
Bucephela, named by Alexander the Great after his horse. It was located on the Hydaspes.
There was also Bucephela Akra somewhere near Troezen in the Argolid, but I don't think it was named for the horse.
There was also Bucephela Akra somewhere near Troezen in the Argolid, but I don't think it was named for the horse.
I suspect (not sure) that the one near Troezen actually refers to the head of a cow (which Bucephalas means). Not sure what Akra meant in this context, since it has many meanings, such as "edges". It might refer to a part of the instrument used to guide cows, which was termed after its sharper edge as "kentron", and in Byzantine times those types of instruments were termed as "bucentra", even more in relation to the cows which were controlled with their help.
sydhe
King of Kongs
I'm thinking "Akra" may mean height, in which case the name may mean something like "Ox-head heights."
Cynoscephalae refers to a couple of "dog-head" hills where a couple of battles were fought, but I don't think there was a town by that name.
Cynoscephalae refers to a couple of "dog-head" hills where a couple of battles were fought, but I don't think there was a town by that name.
I honestly don't know if anybody's decided whether Hekatompylos was founded by Alexander or Seleukos (or Antiochos). I think that Kuhrt and Sherwin-White decided that it was a Seleukid founding and that Alexander only stopped there for awhile, but the distinction's largely arbitrary anyway. Whether Alexander formally founded the city or not, the Seleukids unquestionably did the major work of actually building and populating the city.Another hellenistic city with a cool name is Hekatompylos (or Hekatontapylos) (Εκατόμπυλοςwhich literally means a city that has one hundred gates.
From an article i just read it seems that was a common name for cities which simply had more than the ordinary four gates (iirc Thebes was also called by that epithet, although it had seven gates)
It was founded (probably) by Seleykos I, in the region of Parthia, although i read that it is also claimed that Alexander himself founded it, and he had camped there for a while (Dachs would know for sure, since he said he liked Seleykos I, and if you do help here, Dachs, can you also say if the expansion of the Ptolemaic empire to the Triakontaschoinos happened indeed during the reign of Ptolemy VI Philometor?)
I don't know if the Ptolemaioi first ruled the Triakontaschoinos under Ptolemaios Philometor, but I think that the first epigraphical evidence of the Ptolemaioi in the region comes from that time period.
Something like that. An akra was a common Hellenistic term for a citadel or fortress, usually on higher ground, often the place to house a phrourion, or garrison. Boukephala Akra would presumably be a high fortified place, and yes, named after an 'ox-head' or something.
Thank you both
PS: and sorry for the hasty error there, bous meant ox, not cow (ox being the male of the species, which is unable to reproduce and is used for work or its meat).
Edit: still would have been cool if "Boucephala akra" was actually a word-play, meaning the area was really low ground next to the nearby Arcadian heights, ground so low that even the head of an ox reached its highest part
PS: and sorry for the hasty error there, bous meant ox, not cow
(ox being the male of the species, which is unable to reproduce and is used for work or its meat).Edit: still would have been cool if "Boucephala akra" was actually a word-play, meaning the area was really low ground next to the nearby Arcadian heights, ground so low that even the head of an ox reached its highest part
Pangur Bán;12721443 said:
There's also an Albania in the Caucasus as well
I still get confused between Galicia in Eastern Europe and Galicia in Spain.
^In the case of the Galatia in Asia Minor, though, there is a real connection, given that it was populated for a time by Gaul immigrants (they had invaded eastern Europe and in the end settled in the inner region just west of Cappadocia).
Probably this ended in the Hellenistic era, or at least i recall one famous battle between those Galatians and the Seleykids (iirc) in which the Seleykids won utterly, but only because they had elephants, which the Galatians had never seen before and panicked due to them. I think that Lucian refers to that battle, as a way to make his point that sometimes it is the weirdness itself that causes an obvious effect, and not actual skill (he was going on about art having weird themes).
Probably this ended in the Hellenistic era, or at least i recall one famous battle between those Galatians and the Seleykids (iirc) in which the Seleykids won utterly, but only because they had elephants, which the Galatians had never seen before and panicked due to them. I think that Lucian refers to that battle, as a way to make his point that sometimes it is the weirdness itself that causes an obvious effect, and not actual skill (he was going on about art having weird themes).
Galatia was seized by the famous Three "Tribes" (Tectosages, Trocmii, and Tolistobogii), the remnants of a larger group that had gotten mired in the extremely messy struggle for the Makedonian throne in the 270s BC. They mostly spoke a Celtic language, and adopted elements of material culture and possibly religion of many of the 'Gallic' peoples of the west, but there's no indication whatsoever that they actually came from what's now France.
These groups remained in the region from the late 270s into the age of the Roman Empire, and there are even references by St. Jerome as to strange words surviving in local Galatian dialect in the late fourth century that might have been descended from the Celtic that the people of the Three Tribes had spoken centuries before. (Unfortunately, given the context of the source, Jerome's statement really amounts to 'one language I don't know sounds vaguely like another language I don't know', which doesn't really amount to much.) They were continuously employed in the armies of pretty much all the neighboring Hellenistic states, especially by the Ptolemaioi, and retained political self-rule by a line of homegrown kings until the early imperial period.
I don't know if I'd say that there was a "real connection" between the Three Tribes and the societies of what would eventually become Roman Gaul, any more so than there would be a "real connection" between the kingdom of Platon II in Gandhara and the Bosporan Kingdom in the Crimea. They probably shared a language and maybe some cultural practices and had precisely zero contact with each other.
These groups remained in the region from the late 270s into the age of the Roman Empire, and there are even references by St. Jerome as to strange words surviving in local Galatian dialect in the late fourth century that might have been descended from the Celtic that the people of the Three Tribes had spoken centuries before. (Unfortunately, given the context of the source, Jerome's statement really amounts to 'one language I don't know sounds vaguely like another language I don't know', which doesn't really amount to much.) They were continuously employed in the armies of pretty much all the neighboring Hellenistic states, especially by the Ptolemaioi, and retained political self-rule by a line of homegrown kings until the early imperial period.
I don't know if I'd say that there was a "real connection" between the Three Tribes and the societies of what would eventually become Roman Gaul, any more so than there would be a "real connection" between the kingdom of Platon II in Gandhara and the Bosporan Kingdom in the Crimea. They probably shared a language and maybe some cultural practices and had precisely zero contact with each other.
Yeah, it was pretty messed up. Makedonia's throne had been up for grabs since the 290s, when Demetrios Poliorketes' kingdom fell apart and was partitioned by Pyrrhos of Epeiros and the epigon Lysimachos. Lysimachos promptly back-stabbed Pyrrhos and took the whole thing for himself. Then, in 281 BC, Lysimachos was killed at the Battle of Korou Pedion in fighting with Seleukos I's troops, and Seleukos moved west to take possession of his enemy's old kingdom. But then he was assassinated by Ptolemaios Keraunos, a bastard son of Ptolemaios I, who made himself king of Makedonia as Seleukos' son Antiochos scrambled to hold the rest of his father's empire together.
Keraunos promptly began seeking for easy opportunities to bolster his reputation as a kingly warrior type, and found them in fighting the tribes of Makedonia's northern border, which had already been stirred up by the collapse of Lysimachos' kingdom. It's not clear how exactly this happened, but apparently Keraunos' interventions helped bring a tribal confederation into being, and this confederation, which included the Three Tribes, killed him in battle in 279 BC.
Makedonia promptly underwent a three-month anarchy in which several contestants vied for the throne as Celts rampaged throughout the country. Two of them - Keraunos' brother Meleagros, and Antipatros II, the son of the epigon Kassandros - managed to command enough support to rule in Pella for a short while, but eventually the general Sosthenes took control of the country. The Celts, in the meantime, had caused a general panic throughout Greece, briefly threatening Delphoi with their raiding parties. This spawned a panhellenic truce in order for the Aitolians to lead an army in defense of the sacred site. The Greeks successfully beat back the invaders, but not before widespread pillaging.
All this opened the way for another contender, Antigonos Gonatas, son of the aforementioned Demetrios, who'd been hiding out with loyal forces in Demetrios' old central Greek fortress network, the so-called Fetters. Gonatas tried to unseat Sosthenes in 278 but failed, but kept up the struggle. But Sosthenes died under unknown circumstances (killed in battle? against Celts or Gonatas? murdered by aristocratic opposition, or at Gonatas' behest?) in the following year, and Gonatas moved north to take his place. He managed to trap a large force of Celts on the Chersonesos peninsula and slaughter them, thus earning him the general adulation of the Greek world as their savior from the barbarians, and went to Makedonia to claim the throne of Philip and Alexander.
Of course, it would be another five years before Gonatas became secure on that throne, but that's another story.
Several Celtic groups had eventually participated in the attack on Makedonia and mainland Greece, but with Gonatas at least temporarily in firm control of the country there were no longer any easy pickings over there. The mechanics of the crossing to Anatolia aren't totally clear, but the Three Tribes did it, and there they found a place as divided against itself as Makedonia and Greece had been in 279. The Seleukids were fighting the Pergamenes were fighting the Bithynians, and both Gonatas and the Ptolemaioi were meddling as well. Under the circumstances, it was not particularly difficult for them to carve a pocket kingdom for themselves out of central Anatolia, and although they would never become a major power on their own, they managed to survive and make themselves useful to the various powers vying for control of Anatolia.
Keraunos promptly began seeking for easy opportunities to bolster his reputation as a kingly warrior type, and found them in fighting the tribes of Makedonia's northern border, which had already been stirred up by the collapse of Lysimachos' kingdom. It's not clear how exactly this happened, but apparently Keraunos' interventions helped bring a tribal confederation into being, and this confederation, which included the Three Tribes, killed him in battle in 279 BC.
Makedonia promptly underwent a three-month anarchy in which several contestants vied for the throne as Celts rampaged throughout the country. Two of them - Keraunos' brother Meleagros, and Antipatros II, the son of the epigon Kassandros - managed to command enough support to rule in Pella for a short while, but eventually the general Sosthenes took control of the country. The Celts, in the meantime, had caused a general panic throughout Greece, briefly threatening Delphoi with their raiding parties. This spawned a panhellenic truce in order for the Aitolians to lead an army in defense of the sacred site. The Greeks successfully beat back the invaders, but not before widespread pillaging.
All this opened the way for another contender, Antigonos Gonatas, son of the aforementioned Demetrios, who'd been hiding out with loyal forces in Demetrios' old central Greek fortress network, the so-called Fetters. Gonatas tried to unseat Sosthenes in 278 but failed, but kept up the struggle. But Sosthenes died under unknown circumstances (killed in battle? against Celts or Gonatas? murdered by aristocratic opposition, or at Gonatas' behest?) in the following year, and Gonatas moved north to take his place. He managed to trap a large force of Celts on the Chersonesos peninsula and slaughter them, thus earning him the general adulation of the Greek world as their savior from the barbarians, and went to Makedonia to claim the throne of Philip and Alexander.
Of course, it would be another five years before Gonatas became secure on that throne, but that's another story.
Several Celtic groups had eventually participated in the attack on Makedonia and mainland Greece, but with Gonatas at least temporarily in firm control of the country there were no longer any easy pickings over there. The mechanics of the crossing to Anatolia aren't totally clear, but the Three Tribes did it, and there they found a place as divided against itself as Makedonia and Greece had been in 279. The Seleukids were fighting the Pergamenes were fighting the Bithynians, and both Gonatas and the Ptolemaioi were meddling as well. Under the circumstances, it was not particularly difficult for them to carve a pocket kingdom for themselves out of central Anatolia, and although they would never become a major power on their own, they managed to survive and make themselves useful to the various powers vying for control of Anatolia.
sydhe
King of Kongs
The two Galicias are also named for Celtic inhabitants. I'm not sure how or when they got into the one in Eastern Europe. There was a Celtic migration into western Iberia, which is why you find Galicia and Portugal there.
I think that the linguistic connections for the name of Eastern Europe's Galicia are semi-tenuous and are mostly adopted in lieu of anything better. The word comes from Halicz/Halych, the name of a reasonably powerful medieval principality in the area. It might've been named for some mysterious Celtic group there, but there's no actual proof of one spending time in the region, and no explanation for why its name would've been given to the area. There are other linguistic arguments for the name, but they're just as dubious.
Domen
Misico dux Vandalorum
The city of Gelonus / Gelonos.
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