Volcae

The Volcae (ˈwɔɫkae̯) 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 Tectosagii were a group of the Volcae who moved through Macedonia into Anatolia c. 277 BC. Strabo says the Tectosagii came originally from the region near modern Toulouse, in France. They are mentioned as Volcis and Volcarum by Caesar (mid-1st c. BC), as Ou̓ólkai (Οὐόλκαι) by Strabo (early 1st c. AD) and Ptolemy (2nd c. AD), and as Volce on the Tabula Peutingeriana (4–5th c. AD). Most modern Celtologists regard the tribal name Uolcae (sing. Uolcos) as stemming from a Gaulish noun uolcos, uolca ('hawk, falcon'), which can be compared with the Welsh gwalch ('hawk, rascal' > 'fighter'). In particular, the Gaulish personal name Catu-uolcos has an exact parallel in the Welsh cadwalch ('hero, champion, warrior'), itself from an earlier Old Brittonic *katu-wealkos ('battle-hawk'). The Gaulish stem uolc- can also be found in the personal names Uolcius, Uolcenius, Uolcenia, Uolcinius, Uolcacius, Uolciani, and Uolcanus.