Near-contemporary Cicero briefly mentioned it in his philosophical dialogue De Natura Deorum, referencing political scandal in the late Roman Republic with the line "Consider other judicial inquiries, the one in reference to the gold of Tolosa, and the one on the Jugurthine conspiracy..."[1] The treasure itself was discussed by several ancient historians, including Strabo and Cassius Dio.
Greek origins of Gallic treasure
The course of Volcae tribal migration throughout the 3rd centuries BC, noting the destination of some Tectosages and the Arecomisci to the area around Tolosa
In a fragment from Cassius Dio's work, the historian asserted that the Gold of Tolosa had its origins in the Gallic invasion of Greece under Brennus.[2]
In 280 BC, a great army of Gallic warriors invaded Macedon and central Greece. According to Pausanias, the Gauls were motivated by a desire for plunder.[3] The success of the expedition was rich enough to prompt Brennus, who been one of the leaders of the 280 BC expedition, to persuade the Gallic tribes to launch another invasion. Brennus convinced the Gauls that the relative Greek weakness at the time and the great wealth of the Greek cities and temple sanctuaries were opportunities to be exploited.[3] Strabo relates that the Volcae Tectosages were believed to have been amongst the tribes that joined Brennus in this invasion.[4]
The campaign of 279 BC proved less successful than that of the previous year. While a Greek coalition force of Aetolians, Boeotians, Athenians, Phocians, and other Greeks north of Corinth mustered at the narrow pass of Thermopylae, on the east coast of central Greece, Brennus pushed southward with his warriors. A Greek attempt to delay the Gauls at the Spercheios failed when a Gallic force of ten thousand swam the river and moved to outflank the outnumbered Greeks.[3]
At the Battle of Thermopylae, the Greeks initially managed to check the Gallic advance, inflicting heavy losses on Brennus' army. In an attempt to divide the Greek coalition force and thereby weaken it, Brennus detached approximately forty thousand of his warriors from the main army and dispatched them to Aetolia. This detachment sacked Callia and proceeded to brutally pillage the Aetolian towns and temples. Alarmed at the news, the Aetolian detachment left Thermopylae in order to defend their homeland.[3]
The news from Aetolia undermined Greek morale and prompted the defection of the Heracleots and the Aenianians from the Greek coalition. Eager for the Gauls to leave their territories, the Heracleots and the Aenianians showed Brennus how to bypass the main pass at Thermopylae in order to outflank the Greek force. Brennus once again divided his army, leaving the main force under the command of Acichorius while he himself took a detachment through the same path used by the Persianssome two centuries previously, defeating the Phocian attachment charged with guarding it.[3]
Alerted by the Phocians, the Greek coalition force abandoned Thermopylae and were evacuated by the Athenian fleet. Unwilling to wait for Acichorius, Brennus marched his warriors to the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi[3] and according to some sources, despoiled it.[2]
The Greeks eventually succeeded in driving out the Gauls, wounding Brennus and causing his eventual death.[3] At this point, the Gauls splintered. Some of them, including a part of the Tectosages, would cross the Hellespont and settle in Galatia.[5] The rest were thought to have returned to their homelands in southern Gaul, bearing with them the treasures of Greece.[4]
Junianus Justinus, excerpting the work of Gnaeus Pompeius Trogus, claims that those Tectosages who returned to Tolosa suffered "a pestilential distemper" that was not dispelled until after they had thrown their plunder into the lakes.[6]
During the latter part of the second century BC, a large coalition of German and Gallic tribes, which eventually included the Cimbri, the Teutones, the Boii, the Tigurini, and the Ambrones, undertook a mass migration. After inflicting several defeats on Rome, a Roman army under the command of the consulLucius Cassius Longinus in 107 BC confronted the Tigurini near Burdigala, modern-day Bordeaux. The Romans were defeated badly and a number of Gallic tribes, including the Volcae Tectosages, revolted. A second force, under the command of the consul Quintus Servilius Caepio, was dispatched to Gallia Transalpina to restore order in 106 BC.[7]
After subduing Tolosa, Caepio reported the discovery of a massive hoard of treasure. Strabo, citing Poseidonius, said the treasure amounted to some fifteen thousand talents of gold and silver bullion,[4] while Justinus and Orosius reports the haul at 100,000 pounds of gold and 110,000 pounds of silver.[8]
Despite orders to send the treasure to Rome, the gold never reached the city. Orosius recorded that Caepio had sent the treasure under guard to Massilia, a local Roman ally. However, the soldiers guarding the gold were slain, with the treasure itself never found again. Caepio was suspected of having stolen the gold in its entirety.[8]
The theft of the gold was soon overshadowed by Caepio's prominent role in the defeat at the Battle of Arausio in 105 BC, the greatest Roman disaster since Cannae. Now proconsul and unwilling to cooperate with his superior,[2] the novus homo consul Gnaeus Mallius Maximus, Caepio, eager for glory, provoked a battle with the Cimbri.[9] The end result was a rout, with at least 70,000 Roman legionaries dead,[10] and total losses numbering over 120,000.[11]
While Caepio survived the debacle, his career did not. He was quickly stripped of his proconsular imperium and his seat in the Roman Senate. He was soon brought up on charges by the tribune of the plebsGaius Norbanus. Charged over the loss of his army, Caepio was stripped of his Roman citizenship, fined 15,000 talents, had his property confiscated, and forbidden fire and water within eight hundred miles of Rome. He died in exile in Smyrna.[5]
Aurum habet Tolosanum
Marble bust of Brutus, supposedly the last heir of the Gold of Tolosa
The gold of Tolosa was never found, but was suspected to have remained in the custody of the Servilli Caepiones, who despite the total impoverishment of their patriarch, became immensely wealthy.[7] Despite this, the heirs of Caepio also seemed to suffer from unlucky ends. During the Social War, Caepio's son, also called Quintus Servilius Caepio, was tricked by the Marsic general Quintus Poppaedius Silo and ambushed, which resulted in the destruction of his army and his own death.[12]Caepio's grandson died young from an unnamed illness,[13] while the last heir, Caepio's great-grandson Marcus Junius Brutus, would undertake the assassination of Julius Caesar, an action which eventually led to the rise of Octavian and the Roman Empire, and Brutus' death at the Battle of Philippi.[14]
Perhaps as a consequence of these generational misfortunes, the sources make frequent allusions to the gold being cursed. The earliest, Strabo, says that due to "having laid hands on [the gold of Tolosa]... Caepio ended his life in misfortunes",[4] while his near-contemporary Pompeius Trogus even suggested that the defeat at Arausio was punishment for the theft of the treasure.[6] A Latin proverb, Aurum habet Tolosanum ("He has got the gold of Tolosa"; taken to mean “His ill-gotten wealth will do him no good.”) was even formed as a result.[15]
Disagreements in the ancient sources
As is common, the ancient sources frequently contradict each other. Cicero is the earliest author whose extant writings mention the Gold of Tolosa, referencing the inquiry into its disappearance in De Natura Deorum, which was written in the two years before his death in 43 BC.[16] Cicero does not mention its provenance,[1] but at least establishes that it was believed to exist. A fragment from the history-book written by Cassius Dio between 200 and 222AD,[17] asserts the hoard's origin as that of treasure looted from Delphi.[2]
Strabo, writing as late as 17AD,[18] also mentions the account of the treasure's origin as the plunder of Delphi, but prefers Poseidonius's account, now lost. Quoting Poseidonius, Strabo asserts that "the temple at Delphi was in those times already empty of such treasure, because it had been robbed at the time of the sacred war by the Phocians." Poseidonius did not believe that the Tectosages successfully brought away the plunder of Delphi to Tolosa, as they had "suffered wretchedly" during the retreat and gone in different directions. Instead, Poseidonius wrote that the origin of the hoard was in Gaul itself, "since the country was rich in gold, and also belonged to people who were god-fearing and not extravagant in their ways of living, it came to have treasures..."[4]
The only extant sources to mention the Gallic attack on Delphi are the second-centuryAD travelogue of Pausanias and the history of Justinus, the latter of which excerpts the first centuryBC works of Pompeius Trogus. Pausanias states that the Gauls did not sack the temple sanctuary and that none of the Gauls survived the retreat,[3] while Justinus's summary states that the attack was a disaster and resulted in the fragmentation of the Gallic force, with some settling in Anatolia, others in Thrace, and a third contingent that returned to Tolosa.[6]
While Strabo argued that the Temple of Apollo at Delphi lacked the treasure to be plundered as the Phocians had already taken it in during the Third Sacred War (356–346BC), Philip of Macedon's settlement of that conflict had included the stipulation that the Phocians repay what they had plundered from the temple of Delphi at the rate of 60 talents a year.[19] Excluding Phocian reparations, Pausanias' account describes a number of expensive artistic votive offerings made to the sanctuary from all over the ancient Greek world in the years preceding the invasion.[3]
The Cimbri were an ancient tribe in Europe. Ancient authors described them variously as a Celtic people, Germanic people, or even Cimmerian. Several ancient sources indicate that they lived in Jutland, which in some classical texts was called the Cimbrian peninsula. There is no direct evidence for the language they spoke, though some scholars argue that it was a Germanic language, while others argue that it was Celtic.
Year 279 BC was a year of the pre-Julian Roman calendar. At the time it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Publius Sulpicius Saverrio and Publius Decius Mus. The denomination 279 BC for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for many years.
Philetaerus was the founder of the Attalid dynasty of Pergamon in Anatolia.
The Volcae were a Gallic tribal confederation constituted before the raid of combined Gauls that invaded Macedonia c. 270 BC and fought the assembled Greeks at the Battle of Thermopylae in 279 BC. Tribes known by the name Volcae were found simultaneously in southern Gaul, Moravia, the Ebro valley of the Iberian Peninsula, and Galatia in Anatolia. The Volcae appear to have been part of the late La Tène material culture, and a Celtic identity has been attributed to the Volcae, based on mentions in Greek and Latin sources as well as onomastic evidence. Driven by highly mobile groups operating outside the tribal system and comprising diverse elements, the Volcae were one of the new ethnic entities formed during the Celtic military expansion at the beginning of the 3rd century BC. Collecting in the famous excursion into the Balkans, ostensibly, from the Greek point of view, to raid Delphi, a branch of the Volcae split from the main group on the way into the Balkans and joined two other tribes, the Tolistobogii and the Trocmi, to settle in central Anatolia and establish a new identity as the Galatians.
The Battle of Vercellae, or Battle of the Raudine Plain, was fought on 30 July 101 BC on a plain near Vercellae in Gallia Cisalpina. A Germanic-Celtic confederation under the command of the Cimbric king Boiorix was defeated by a Roman army under the joint command of the consul Gaius Marius and the proconsul Quintus Lutatius Catulus. The battle marked the end of the Germanic threat to the Roman Republic.
Quintus Servilius Caepio was a Roman statesman and general, consul in 106 BC, and proconsul of Cisalpine Gaul in 105 BC. He was the father of Quintus Servilius Caepio and the grandfather of Servilia.
The gens Pompeia was a plebeian family at ancient Rome, first appearing in history during the second century BC, and frequently occupying the highest offices of the Roman state from then until imperial times. The first of the Pompeii to obtain the consulship was Quintus Pompeius in 141 BC, but by far the most illustrious of the gens was Gnaeus Pompeius, surnamed Magnus, a distinguished general under the dictator Sulla, who became a member of the First Triumvirate, together with Caesar and Crassus. After the death of Crassus, the rivalry between Caesar and Pompeius led to the Civil War, one of the defining events of the final years of the Roman Republic.
The Battle of Aquae Sextiae (Aix-en-Provence) took place in 102 BC. After a string of Roman defeats, the Romans under Gaius Marius finally defeated the Teutones and Ambrones as they attempted to advance through the Alps into Italy. Some of the surviving captives are reported to have been among the rebelling gladiators in the Third Servile War. Local lore associates the name of the mountain, Mont St. Victoire, with the Roman victory at the battle of Aquae Sextiae, but Frédéric Mistral and other scholars have debunked this theory.
Gaius Norbanus, nicknamed Balbus was a Roman politician who was elected consul in 83 BC alongside Lucius Cornelius Scipio Asiaticus. He committed suicide in exile at Rhodes after being proscribed by Lucius Cornelius Sulla shortly after the latter's victory in the civil war.
Gnaeus Mallius Maximus was a Roman politician and general.
Leosthenes was an Athenian who was commander of the combined Greek army in the Lamian War. Leosthenes was the son of his namesake father Leosthenes who had suffered exile in 362/1 BC and who had fled to the court of Philip II. It is unknown by what means he had obtained the high reputation he had when he first makes his appearance in history. It has been inferred from a passage in Strabo, that he had first served under Alexander the Great in Asia; but it now seems certain that this is a mistake, and rather the reference should have been to Leonnatus.
Brennus was one of the Gaulish leaders of the army of the Gallic invasion of the Balkans. While invading the Greek mainland he managed to momentarily reach as far south as Delphi in an attempt to loot the rich treasury of the sanctuary of Apollo. His army suffered a devastating defeat at Delphi; he was heavily injured during the battle and committed suicide there. His militarily inexperienced army was forced to a continuous retreat by the tactical attacks of the Greek city-states and was cut down to a remaining band that fled from Greece.
The Tectosages or Tectosagii were one of the three ancient Gallic tribes of Galatia in central Asia Minor, together with the Tolistobogii and Trocmii.
The Battle of Thermopylae was fought in 279 BC between invading Gallic armies and a combined army of Greek Aetolians, Boeotians, Athenians, and Phocians at Thermopylae. The Gauls under Brennus were victorious, and advanced further into the Greek peninsula where they attempted to sack Delphi but were completely defeated.
Bolgios was a Gaulish leader during the Gallic invasion of the Balkans who led an invasion of Macedon and Illyria in 279 BC, killing the Macedonian king Ptolemy Keraunos.
Gallic groups, originating from the various La Tène chiefdoms, began a southeastern movement into the Balkans from the 4th century BC. Although Gallic settlements were concentrated in the western half of the Carpathian basin, there were notable incursions and settlements within the Balkans.
The Helvii were a relatively small Celtic polity west of the Rhône river on the northern border of Gallia Narbonensis. Their territory was roughly equivalent to the Vivarais, in the modern French department of Ardèche. Alba Helviorum was their capital, possibly the Alba Augusta mentioned by Ptolemy, and usually identified with modern-day Alba-la-Romaine. In the 5th century the capital seems to have been moved to Viviers.
Over the course of nearly four centuries, the Roman Republic fought a series of wars against various Celtic tribes, whom they collectively described as Galli, or Gauls. Among the principal Gallic peoples described as antagonists by Greek and Roman writers were the Senones, Insubres, Boii, and Gaesatae.
The Galatians were a Celtic people dwelling in Galatia, a region of central Anatolia in modern-day Turkey surrounding Ankara during the Hellenistic period. They spoke the Galatian language, which was closely related to Gaulish, a contemporary Celtic language spoken in Gaul.
Buckley, Terry (1996). Aspects of Greek history, 750-323 BC: a source-based approach. Routledge. ISBN0-415-09957-9.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
