in antiquity, a name given to the priests of Cybele, from the river Gallus in Phrygia; but of the etymology of the name we have no certain account. All that we learn with certainty about them is, that they were eunuchs and Phrygians, and that in their solemn processions they danced, bawled, drummed, cut and slashed themselves, playing upon timbrels, pipes, cymbals, &c., and driving about an ass loaded with the sacred rites and trumpery of their goddesses. When a young man was to be initiated, he was to throw off his clothes, run crying aloud into the midst of their troop, and there draw a sword and castrate himself; after this he was to run into the street with the parts cut off, in his hand, throw them into some house, and in the same house put on a woman's dress.

These priests had the names also of Curetes, Corybantes, and Dactyls. The chief priest was called Archigallus. This order of priesthood is found both amongst Greeks and Romans. See an account of them in Lucret. lib. ii. and Juven. sat. vi.

the Gauls. See Gallia and Gauls.

Galli, five small desolate islands on the coast of the Principato Citra of Naples. They are supposed to be the Syrenae, or islands once inhabited by the Sirens, which Ulysses passed with so much caution and hazard. Great revolutions, however, have been occasioned in their shape, size, and number, by the effects of subterranean fire; and some learned persons go so far as to affirm, that these rocks have risen from the bottom of the sea since Homer sang his rhapsodies; consequently, that those monsters dwelt on some other spot, probably Sicily or Capri. The tradition of Sirens residing hereabouts is very ancient and universally admitted; but what they really were, divested of their fabulous and poetical disguise, it is not easy to discover. See Siren.

The Sirens were only three in number; and therefore if these and the Galli be the same, two more must have since risen, or the three have been split into five by a subterranean convulsion. On the largest is a watch-tower, and the next has a deserted hermitage. The principal island is only a narrow semicircular ridge covered with a shallow coat of soil; two other little islands and some jagged rocks just peeping above the waves, correspond with this so as to trace the outline of a volcanic crater. The composition of them all is at top a calcareous rock extremely shaken, tumbled, and confused, mixed with masses of breccia, disposed in a most irregular manner; below these is lava, and the deeper the eye follows it the stronger are the marks of fire: below the surface of the water, and in some places above it, the layers are complete blocks of basaltes. Hence it is fair to presume, that central fires have heated up to light the torrid substances that originally lay near their focus, with all the intermediate strata that covered them from the sea. The layers incline downwards from east to west; the air seems to have forced its way into part of the mass while in fusion, and by checking its workings caused many large... caverns to be left in it. These islands are uncultivated and uninhabited since the old hermit of St Antonio died. Myrtle covers most of the surface.