Page 79 - THE SLOUGHI REVIEW - ISSUE 13

T H E S L O U G H I R E V I E W 7 9

But since the Galatians were good farmers, they cultivated this land and practised
agriculture and animal husbandry. So we can deduce two things from this: firstly, the
Galatian tribes lived nomadically until they were able to conquer a territory or were

assigned it for their services to princes of the corresponding area. This had not always
been the case. In the Hallstatt period they had been sedentary, respected and successful
traders and farmers. Secondly, however, it must be noted that nomadic cultures obviously
also practised a kind of reduced agriculture. But such cultures include versatile dogs.

Galatia has many plains that were suitable for breeding numerous cattle, pigs, horses,
sheep and goats. On the high and low plains in southern Galatia (= Lycaonia) there are

grazing areas for wild asses, which multiplied there to an extreme degree. Arrian
describes them as a measure of speed of horses in his Kynegetika.

Lucius Flavius Arrianos (c. 85 to 145/146 AD) spent time in three areas in his life where
he could theoretically have had contact with Celtic culture and thus also encountered the

Vertragus: Baetica, in southern Spain near Malaga, Noricum, which encompassed Austria
with adjacent parts of Bavaria and Slovenia, and Bithynia, where he was from. Ancient
Bithynia is located in present-day Turkey, roughly from the Dardanelles to the Black Sea.

Arrian was proconsul of Baetica (southern Spain) and later of Cappadocia, central
Anatolia, south of Ankara. In 138 AD, after Hadrian's death, he moved to Athens, where he
created most of his works and wrote historical writings emulating his model Xenophon
[56]. In Athens he also writes of his quick-footed, blue-eyed bitch, “Horme”, the “Eager”,

whom he has with him while still writing the Kynegetikos. This suggests that he brought
her with him from Cappadocia (Anatolia) rather than Baetica (southern Spain), because
dogs rarely live beyond 15 years of age [57].

In fact, he also writes in his book “Kynegetikos” of “the Celtic kind of bitches, ... But that he

also knew of no other kind of bitches equal to the Celtic in speed ...” [58]. This gives us a
direct reference to the Celtic tribes that migrated to Greece and Anatolia in the 3rd
century BC.