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.