The Dying Gaul

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The Dying Gaul
A roman copy of a greek original, perhaps a bronze, commissioned around 223 B.C. for the Acropolis by Attalus I of Pergamon for his victory against the Gauls. The defeated man, collapsed, has the physical traits and the moustache typical of the gaellic population. The work was probably found in the seventeenth century during work on Villa Ludovisi. It was one of the works that Napoleon brought to Paris in 1797, but it was returned after the fall of the empire in 1815.