once prosperous Byzantines. They were doomed, he says, to suffer the punishment of Tantalus, as the produce of their rich fields, at the moment they were about to gather it, was swept off under their very eyes by a sudden incursion of barbarians. Still they had the spirit to cling to their old position of a free Greek city. But worse troubles were in store for them. A new peril hung over their city in the third century B.C. The great southward movement of the Gauls, which had well-nigh overwhelmed Rome a century before, now began to threaten Byzantium. Under the leadership of Brennus, a name common, it would seem, among Gallic chieftains, a host of these warlike barbarians had ravaged Macedonia and Thessaly about the year 279 B.C., and even penetrated to Delphi, intent on plundering the sacred treasures of its famous temple. There, however, Greek valour and discipline, though the defenders were but few, as in the days of Leonidas, hurled back the invading multitude and inflicted on them a defeat which a subsequent storm of unusual fury converted into a ruinous disaster. Those who escaped found their way to Thrace, and joined other Gauls who had deserted Brennus and chosen to follow two other chieftains, Leonorius and Lutarius, into that country. They were charmed with the neighbourhood of Byzantium, and after some decisive successes over the Thracian tribes, they settled down in those parts. The Byzantines felt themselves in imminent danger, and sought to avert it by the payment of a large tribute. On this humiliating condition their fruitful lands were to be spared by the invader. But the Gauls
