Page:EB1911 - Volume 11.djvu/415

 transferred sense, to describe a gathering of brilliant or distinguished persons or objects.

GALBA, SERVIUS SULPICIUS, Roman general and orator. He served under Lucius Aemilius Paulus in the third Macedonian War. As praetor in 151 in farther Spain he made himself infamous by the treacherous murder of a number of Lusitanians, with their wives and children, after inducing them to surrender by the promise of grants of land. For this in 149 he was brought to trial, but secured an acquittal by bribery and by holding up his little children before the people to gain their sympathy. He was consul in 144, and must have been alive in 138. He was an eloquent speaker, noted for his violent gesticulations, and, in Cicero’s opinion, was the first of the Roman orators. His speeches, however, were almost forgotten in Cicero’s time.

GALBA, SERVIUS SULPICIUS, Roman emperor (June 68 to January 69), born near Terracina, on the 24th of December 5 He came of a noble family and was a man of great wealth, but unconnected either by birth or by adoption with the first six Caesars. In his early years he was regarded as a youth of remarkable abilities, and it is said that both Augustus and Tiberius prophesied his future eminence (Tacitus, Annals, vi. 20; Suetonius, Galba, 4). Praetor in 20, and consul in 33, he acquired a well-merited reputation in the provinces of Gaul, Germany, Africa and Spain by his military capability, strictness and impartiality. On the death of Caligula, he refused the invitation of his friends to make a bid for empire, and loyally served Claudius. For the first half of Nero’s reign he lived in retirement, till, in 61, the emperor bestowed on him the province of Hispania Tarraconensis. In the spring of 68 Galba was informed of Nero’s intention to put him to death, and of the insurrection of Julius Vindex in Gaul. He was at first inclined to follow the example of Vindex, but the defeat and suicide of the latter renewed his hesitation. The news that Nymphidius Sabinus, the praefect of the praetorians, had declared in his favour revived Galba’s spirits. Hitherto, he had only dared to call himself the legate of the senate and Roman people; after the murder of Nero, he assumed the title of Caesar, and marched straight for Rome. At first he was welcomed by the senate and the party of order, but he was never popular with the soldiers or the people. He incurred the hatred of the praetorians by scornfully refusing to pay them the reward promised in his name, and disgusted the mob by his meanness and dislike of pomp and display. His advanced age had destroyed his energy, and he was entirely in the hands of favourites. An outbreak amongst the legions of Germany, who demanded that the senate should choose another emperor, first made him aware of his own unpopularity and the general discontent. In order to check the rising storm, he adopted as his coadjutor and successor L. Calpurnius Piso Frugi Licinianus, a man in every way worthy of the honour. His choice was wise and patriotic; but the populace regarded it as a sign of fear, and the praetorians were indignant, because the usual donative was not forthcoming. M. Salvius Otho, formerly governor of Lusitania, and one of Galba’s earliest supporters, disappointed at not being chosen instead of Piso, entered into communication with the discontented praetorians, and was adopted by them as their emperor. Galba, who at once set out to meet the rebels—he was so feeble that he had to be carried in a litter—was met by a troop of cavalry and butchered near the Lacus Curtius. During the later period of his provincial administration he was indolent and apathetic, but this was due either to a desire not to attract the notice of Nero or to the growing infirmities of age. Tacitus rightly says that all would have pronounced him worthy of empire if he had never been emperor (“omnium consensu capax imperii nisi imperasset”).

 GALBANUM (Heb. Helbenāh; Gr.  ), a gum-resin, the product of Ferula galbaniflua, indigenous to Persia, and perhaps also of other umbelliferous plants. It occurs usually in hard or soft, irregular, more or less translucent and shining lumps, or occasionally in separate tears, of a light-brown, yellowish or greenish-yellow colour, and has a disagreeable, bitter taste, a peculiar, somewhat musky odour, and a specific gravity of 1·212. It contains about 8% of terpene; about 65% of a resin which contains sulphur; about 20% of gum; and a very small quantity of the colourless crystalline substance umbelliferone, C9H6O3. Galbanum is one of the oldest of drugs. In Exodus xxx. 34 it is mentioned as a sweet spice, to be used in the making of a perfume for the tabernacle. Hippocrates employed it in medicine, and Pliny (Nat. Hist. xxiv. 13) ascribes to it extraordinary curative powers, concluding his account of it with the assertion that “the very touch of it mixed with oil of spondylium is sufficient to kill a serpent.” The drug is occasionally given in modern medicine, in doses of from five to fifteen grains. It has the actions common to substances containing a resin and a volatile oil. Its use in medicine is, however, obsolescent.

 GALCHAS, the name given to the highland tribes of Ferghana, Kohistan and Wakhan. These Aryans of the Pamir and Hindu Kush, kinsmen of the Tajiks, are identified with the Calcienses populi of the lay Jesuit Benedict Goes, who crossed the Pamir in 1603 and described them as “of light hair and beard like the Belgians.” The word “Galcha,” which has been explained as meaning “the hungry raven who has withdrawn to the mountains,” in allusion to the retreat of this branch of the Tajik family to the mountains to escape the Tatar hordes, is probably simply the Persian galcha, “clown” or “rustic,” in reference to their uncouth manners. The Galchas conform physically to what has been called the “Alpine or Celtic European race,” so much so that French anthropologists have termed them “those belated Savoyards of Kohistan.” D’Ujfalvy describes them as tall, brown or bronzed and even white, with ruddy cheeks, black, chestnut, sometimes red hair, brown, blue or grey eyes, never oblique, well-shaped, slightly curved nose, thin lips, oval face and round head. Thus it seems reasonable to hold that the Galchas represent the most eastern extension of the Alpine race through Armenia and the Bakhtiari uplands into central Asia. The Galchas for the most part profess Sunnite Mahommedanism.

 GALE, THEOPHILUS (1628–1678), English nonconformist divine, was born in 1628 at Kingsteignton, in Devonshire, where his father was vicar. In 1647 he was entered at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he took his B.A. degree in 1649, and M.A. in 1652. In 1650 he was made fellow and tutor of his college. He remained some years at Oxford, discharging actively the duties of tutor, and was in 1657 appointed as preacher in Winchester cathedral. In 1662 he refused to submit to the Act of Uniformity, and was ejected. He became tutor to the sons of Lord Wharton, whom he accompanied to the Protestant college of Caen, in Normandy, returning to England in 1665. The latter portion of his life he passed in London as assistant to John Rowe, an Independent minister who had charge of an important church in Holborn; Gale succeeded Rowe in 1677, and died in the following year. His principal work, The Court of the Gentiles, which appeared in parts in 1669, 1671 and 1676, is a strange storehouse of miscellaneous philosophical learning. It resembles the Intellectual System of Ralph Cudworth, though much inferior to that work both in general construction and in fundamental idea. Gale’s endeavour (based on a hint of Grotius in De veritate, i. 16) is to prove that the whole philosophy of the Gentiles is a distorted or mangled reproduction of Biblical truths. Just as Cudworth referred the Democritean doctrine of atoms to Moses as the original author, so Gale tries to show that the various systems of Greek thought may be traced back to Biblical sources. Like so many of the learned works of the 17th century, the Court of the