ding their
cars with booty, and dividing their prisoners into two parts; one offered
in sacrifice to their gods, the other strung up to trees and abandoned to
the _gais_ and _matars,_ or javelins and pikes of the conquerors.

Like all barbarians, they, both for pleasure and on principle, added
insolence to ferocity. Their Brenn, or most famous chieftain, whom the
Latins and Greeks call Brennus, dragged in his train Macedonian
prisoners, short, mean, and with shaven heads, and exhibiting them beside
Gallic warriors, tall, robust, long-haired, adorned with chains of gold,
said, "This is what we are, that is what our enemies are."

Ptolemy the Thunderbolt, King of Macedonia, received with haughtiness
their first message requiring of him a ransom for his dominions if he
wished to preserve peace. "Tell those who sent you," he replied to the
Gallic deputation, "to lay down their arms and give up to me their
chieftains. I will then see what peace I can grant them." On the return
of the deputation, the Gauls were moved to laughter. "He shall soon
see," said they, "whether it was in his interest or our own that we
offered him peace." And, indeed, in the first engagement, neither the
famous Macedonian phalanx, nor the elephant he rode, could save King
Ptolemy; the phalanx was broken, the elephant riddled with javelins, the
king himself taken, killed, and his head marched about the field of
battle on the top of a pike.

Macedonia was in consternation; there was a general flight from the open
country, and the gates of the towns were closed. "The people," says an
historian, "cursed the folly of King Ptolemy, and invoked the names of
Philip and Alexander, the guardian deities of their land."

Three years later, another and a more formidable invasion came bursting
upon Thessaly and Greece. It was, according to the unquestionably
exaggerated account of the ancient historians, two hundred thousand
strong, and commanded by that famous, ferocious, and insolent Brennus
mentioned before. His idea was to strike a blow which should
simultaneously enrich the Gauls and stun the Greeks. He meant to plunder
the temple at Delphi, the most venerated place in all Greece, whither
flowed from century to century all kinds of offerings, and where, no
doubt, enormous treasure was deposited. Such was, in the opinion of the
day, the sanctity of the place, that, on the rumor of the projected
profanation, several Greeks essayed to divert the Ga