Ever greedy, fierce, and passionate, they were almost equally dangerous as auxiliaries and as neighbors.

Antigonus, King of Macedonia, was to pay the band he had enrolled a gold piece a head.

They brought their wives and children with them, and at the end of the campaign they claimed pay for their following as well as for themselves: "We were promised," said they, "a gold piece a head for each Gaul; and these are also Gauls." Before long they tired of fighting the battles of another; their power accumulated; fresh hordes, in great numbers, arrived amongst them about the year 281 B.C.

They had before them Thrace, Macedonia, Thessaly, Greece, rich, but distracted and weakened by civil strife.

They effected an entrance at several points, devastating, plundering, loading 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.