Dying Gaul

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For the film, see The Dying Gaul (film).
The Dying Gaul, Capitoline Museums, Rome

The Dying Gaul, also called The Dying Galatian

Attalid dynasty
of Pergamon.

Until the 20th century, the marble statue was usually known as The Dying Gladiator, on the assumption that it depicted a wounded gladiator in a Roman amphitheatre.[3] However, in the mid-19th century it was re-identified as a Gaul or Galatian and the present name "Dying Gaul" gradually achieved popular acceptance. The identification as a "barbarian" was evidenced for the figure's neck torc, thick hair and moustache, weapons and shield carved on the floor, and a type of Gallic carnyx between his legs.[4]

Description

The white marble statue, which may originally have been painted, depicts a wounded, slumped Gaulish or Galatian

Celt, shown with remarkable realism and pathos, particularly as regards the face. A bleeding sword puncture is visible in his lower right chest. The warrior is represented with characteristic Celtic hairstyle and moustache with a Celtic torc around his neck. He sits on his shield while his sword, belt and curved trumpet lie beside him. The sword hilt bears a lion's head. The present base is a 17th-century addition. The nose and left arm restorations upon the discovery of the statue in the 17th century are contested (the right arm would be pushed even more behind his back).[5]

Discovery and expatriation

Back of the sculpture.

The Dying Gaul statue is thought to have been re-discovered in the early 17th century during excavations for the building of the

Louvre Museum
until 1816 when it was returned to Rome.

Portrayal of Celts

Detail showing his neck torc.

The statue serves both as a reminder of the Celts' defeat, thus demonstrating the might of the people who defeated them, and a memorial to their bravery as worthy adversaries. The statue may also provide evidence to corroborate ancient accounts of the fighting style—Diodorus Siculus reported that "Some of them have iron breastplates or chainmail while others fight naked".[7] Polybius wrote an evocative account of Galatian tactics against a Roman army at the Battle of Telamon of 225 BC:

The Insubres and the Boii wore trousers and light cloaks, but the Gaesatae, in their love of glory and defiant spirit, had thrown off their garments and taken up their position in front of the whole army naked and wearing nothing but their arms... The appearance of these naked warriors was a terrifying spectacle, for they were all men of splendid physique and in the prime of life.

— Polybius, Histories II.28

The Roman historian

Asia Minor fought naked and their wounds were plain to see on the whiteness of their bodies.[8] The Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus
regarded this as a foolish tactic:

Our enemies fight naked. What injury could their long hair, their fierce looks, their clashing arms do us? These are mere symbols of barbarian boastfulness.

— Dionysius of Halicarnassus, History of Rome XIV.9
Detail showing the face, hairstyle and torc of the sculpture.

The depiction of this particular Galatian as naked may also have been intended to lend him the dignity of

pedimental sculptures of the Temple of Aphaea at Aegina. The message conveyed by the sculpture, as H. W. Janson comments, is that "they knew how to die, barbarians that they were".[9]

Influence

The Dying Galatian became one of the most celebrated works to have survived from antiquity and was engraved

proper left leg was in three pieces. They are now pinned together with the pin concealed by the left kneecap. The Gaul's "spiky" hair is a 17th-century reworking of longer hair found as broken upon discovery.[12]

During this period, the statue was widely interpreted as representing a defeated gladiator, rather than a Galatian warrior. Hence it was known as the 'Dying' or 'Wounded Gladiator', 'Roman Gladiator', and 'Murmillo Dying'. It has also been called the 'Dying Trumpeter' because one of the scattered objects lying beside the figure is a horn.

The artistic quality and expressive

Byron was one such visitor, commemorating the statue in his poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
:

I see before me the Gladiator lie
He leans upon his hand—his manly brow
Consents to death, but conquers agony,
And his drooped head sinks gradually low—
And through his side, the last drops, ebbing slow

From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one...[13]

The Dying Gladiator at Iford Manor, Wiltshire, England

It was widely copied, with kings,[14] academics and wealthy landowners[15] commissioning their own reproductions of the Dying Gaul. Thomas Jefferson wanted the original or a reproduction at Monticello.[16] The less well-off could purchase copies of the statue in miniature for use as ornaments and paperweights. Full-size plaster copies were also studied by art students.

It was requisitioned by

Washington D.C. This temporary tenure marked the first time the antiquity had left Italy since it was returned in the second decade of the nineteenth century.[16]

References

  1. ^ Capitoline Museums. "Hall of the Galatian". The centre of the room features the so-called 'Dying Galatian', one of the best-known and most important works in the museum. It is a replica of one of the sculptures in the ex-voto group dedicated to Pergamon by Attalus I to commemorate the victories over the Galatians in the III and II centuries BC.
  2. ^ Wolfgang Helbig, Führer durch die öffentlichen Sammlungen klassischer Altertümer in Rom (Tubingen 1963–71) vol. II, pp. 240–42.
  3. ^ Henry Beauchamp Walters, The Art of the Greeks, The Macmillan Company, 1906, p. 130 notes that it is still most commonly called that because of the popularity of Byron's description.
  4. ^ Peixoto, Gabriel B. (2022-01-01). "The Great Attalid Dedication at Pergamon".
  5. doi:10.13140/RG.2.2.14508.54405. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help
    )
  6. ^ Haskell and Penny 1981:224 provide the history of this sculpture.
  7. ISBN 1-84176-143-5. p. 22
  8. ^ Livy, History XXII.46 and XXXVIII.21
  9. ISBN 0-13-389296-4
  10. ^ First by François Perrier, Segmenta nobilium signorum et statuarum que temporis dentem invidium evase (Rome and Paris 1638) plate 91 (noted by Haskell and Penny 225 and note 15).
  11. ^ Kim J. Hartswick, The Gardens of Sallust: a Changing Landscape, p. 107. University of Texas Press, 2004
  12. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
    . Retrieved 16 December 2013.
  13. ^ Byron, Childe Harold, Canto IV (1818), stanzas 140–141.
  14. ^ A plaster cast was made for the King of Spain in 1650, and a marble copy by Michel Monnier for Louis XIV remains at Versailles (Haskell and Penny 1981:22).
  15. ^ A black marble copy for the Duke of Northumberland is in the entrance hall of Syon House, designed by Robert Adam; there are copies in several gardens in England, including Rousham, Oxfordshire (by Peter Scheemakers, 1743, according to Rupert Gunnis, Dictionary of British Sculptors 1660–1851, rev.ed. 1968, s.v. "Scheemakers, Peter") and Wilton House, Wiltshire (Simon Vierpyl, before 1769).
  16. ^
    Washington, DC
    . Retrieved 16 December 2013.

Further reading

  • Art in the Hellenistic Age, Pollitt, J. J., 1986
  • Hellenistic Sculpture, Smith, R.R.R. London, 1991
  • Taste and the Antique, Haskell, F. and N. Penny. New Haven and London, 1981. Cat. no. 44, pp 224ff.

External links

External videos
video icon Dying Gaul, Smarthistory. "Dying Gaul". Smarthistory at Khan Academy. Archived from the original on October 24, 2014. Retrieved January 26, 2013.
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