Figure 80 Hollow-cast original bronze statue from the Classical Period, recovered in the 1920s from an
ancient shipwreck, showing Zeus hurling a thunderbolt; height 2.09 m, ca. 460 BC. Athens, National
Archaeological Museum, 15161.
Source: De Agostini / A. Vergani / Getty Images.
The same is true of a series of sculptures, also from Pergamum, that decorated monuments erected by
King Attalus I to commemorate his military victories in the 230s and 220s BC over the Gauls. The Gauls
were a Celtic people who invaded and raided western Asia Minor in the early third century, settling in
Galatia, the region named after them and familiar from Paul’s epistle in the New Testament to its
inhabitants. The sculptures, some of which survive in Roman copies, depicted the defeated Gallic
warriors and their families, dead and dying. One work that has not survived, even in a copy, showed a
pathetic tableau of a young Gallic child affectionately stroking its slain mother. A different set of emotions
is evoked by a work that does survive in a Roman copy, a group showing a Gallic warrior and his wife
(figure 81). Rather than allow himself and his family to be enslaved by the victorious Macedonians, the
Gaul has stabbed his own wife and, with a look of defiance on his proud face, is plunging his sword into
his chest. These are uncivilized barbarians, who do not live in poleis and who have none of the
refinements of Greek culture. Still, their spirit is admirable and their passionate desire for freedom is
something that Greeks can appreciate. It is this defiant spirit that the artist captures and displays for his
Greek viewer’s admiration (along with the suggestion that “we” Greeks were successful in subduing even
this brave people). Within a hundred years of the creation of this sculpture, however, the Attalid kingdom