Gallus
Γάλλος
Gallus (Γάλλος: Lefke), a small river of Bithynia, having its sources near Modra in the north of Phrygia, and emptying itself into the Sangarius a little more than 300 stadia from Nicomedeia, (Strab. xii. p.543.) Ammianus Marcellinus describes its course as very winding (26.8). Martianus Capella (6.687, ed. Kopp) confounds this river with another of the same name in Galatia, which seems likewise to have been a tributary of the Sangarius, and on the banks of which Pessinus is said to have been situated, From the river Gallus in Galatia the Galli, or priests of Cybele, were said by some to have derived their name, because its water made those who drank of it mad. (Steph. B. sub voce Plin. Nat. 5.42, 6.1, 31.5; Herodian, 1.11; Ov. Fast. 4.364.)
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.