The Dying Gaul in the Capitoline Museum, June 1995

The Dying Gaul (in Italian: Galata Morente) is an ancient Roman marble copy of a lost ancient Greek statue, thought to have been executed in bronze, that was commissioned some time between 230 BC and 220 BC by Attalos I of Pergamon to honor his victory over the Galatians. The present base was added after its rediscovery. The identity of the statue's sculptor is unknown but it has been suggested that Epigonus, the court sculptor of the Attalid dynasty of Pergamon, may have been its author.

The statue depicts a dying Celt with remarkable realism, particularly in the face, and may have been painted. He is represented as a Gallic warrior with a typically Gallic hairstyle and moustache. The figure is naked save for a neck torc. He is shown fighting against death, refusing to accept his fate. The statue serves both as a reminder of the Celts' defeat, thus demonstrating the might of the people that defeated them, and a memorial to their bravery as worthy adversaries. If we discount that it may merely mirror heroic nudity elsewhere in Hellenistic art, it may also provide evidence to corroborate ancient accounts of the Gallic fighting style - historians recorded that the Gaesates fought naked in the battles in the Po valley in Italy in the Cisalpine War, Julius Caesar records in his account of the Gallic War that the Gauls went into battle naked save for their weapons and Diodorus Siculus.30 reports other instances of such combat:

"Some use iron breast-plates in battle, while others fight naked, trusting only in the protection which nature gives.

However, the depiction of this Gaul as naked may also be to lend him the dignity of heroic nudity as seen in depictions of Greek heroes, rather than as a journalistic depiction of actual nudity in combat.

The Dying Gaul became one of the most celebrated works to have survived from antiquity and was endlessly copied and engraved by artists and sculptors. It is thought to have been rediscovered in the early 17th century during excavations for the foundations of the Villa Ludovisi and was first recorded in 1623 in the collections of the powerful Ludovisi family of Rome. It shows signs of having been repaired, with the head seemingly having been broken off at the neck, though it is unclear whether the repairs were carried out in Roman times or after the statue's 17th century rediscovery.

The artistic quality and expressive pathos of the statue aroused great admiration among the educated classes in the 17th and 18th centuries and was a "must-see" sight on the Grand Tour of Europe undertaken by young men of the day. Byron was one such visitor, commemorating the Dying Gaul in his poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (canto 4, stanzas 140-141). It was widely copied, with kings, academics and wealthy landowners commissioning their own reproductions of the Dying Gaul (eg the black marble copy in the Robert Adam entrance hall of Syon House). The less well-off could purchase copies of the statue in miniature for use as ornaments and paperweights. More basic, full-size plaster copies were also studied by arts students during this period (the Royal Academy in London had one such, now at the Courtauld Gallery in London, and also an echorche in this pose, moulded from the body of a dead smuggler and hence nicknamed the "smugglerius").

During this period, some misinterpreted the statue's theme as representing a defeated gladiator, leading to the coining of several (entirely erroneous) alternative names for the statue: the 'Dying' or 'Wounded Gladiator', 'Roman Gladiator', and 'Murmillo Dying'. It has also been called the 'Dying Trumpeter'.

It was requisitioned by Napoleon Bonaparte by terms of the Treaty of Campoformio (1797) during his invasion of Italy and taken in triumph to Paris, where it was put on display. It was returned to Rome in 1815 and is currently on display in the Capitoline Museums.

Copies of the statue can be seen in the Museum of Classical Archaeology at Cambridge University, Leinster House in Dublin Ireland, as well as in Berlin, Prague and Stockholm. In t