(Excerpt from the tour of the Capitoline Museums)

 

Emerging from the subterranean gallery of the Tabularium, you climb the steps up to the ground floor of the Palazzo Nuovo, the other wing of the Capitoline Museums. But before exploring the offerings on the ground floor, carry on to the second floor, climbing the spacious, gently ascending staircase that is reminiscent of the shallow, easily traversed steps that Michelangelo designed for the grand approach to the Campidoglio and the Museums. Especially in the evening, the soft lighting on the ancient sarcophagus, busts, and other bric-a-brac at the first landing evokes a much quieter time from centuries ago, in the Renaissance, when prelates and nobility would leisurely tour the treasures the Vatican had recently assembled for display. By now in your own tour of the Capitoline Museums, you, too, will appreciate the way the stairs make your climb easier and less hurried. At the top of the stairs on the second floor, to your left, is a gigantic ornate krater, or vase, probably from an ancient palace, but your eyes are immediately drawn directly ahead, to a small room of sculptures, brightly illuminated by two crystal chandeliers overhead.

 

In the center of the room, surrounded by other ancient statues along the walls, is a life-size sculpture of a naked man, the grey-white marble highly polished and gleaming in the light. His back is to you, and he is sitting on the ground, leaning to the right and bearing his weight on his right buttock and thigh. His right arm is outstretched, its large hand firmly planted on the ground, tenuously supporting his body. His buttocks, shoulders and back are defined and muscular, and even before you walk around for a frontal view, you know that he has the classical beauty that only the Greeks could portray, and the Romans could only copy. Then again, in fairness to the Romans, it probably would have been impossible to improve upon the original 3rd century B.C. bronze from which the marble masterpiece before you had been copied. The 3rd century bronze commemorated Greek victories over invading Gauls (also called Galatians), a Celtic people who lived in Asia Minor. Nero had reportedly taken the original to adorn his Golden House in the 1st century. The bronze has disappeared, perhaps melted down for armaments, or perhaps buried under the colossal rubble of ancient Rome, quietly waiting to be discovered someday when a new line of the Metro is being excavated or a Roman decides to build a swimming pool in his backyard. Fortunately, the marble copy, probably made in the first or second century A.D., has miraculously survived through the millennia.

 

It is apparent that the handsome young man is mortally wounded. His head is bent downward, his brow knitted with profound worry and pain as he struggles to steady himself with his right arm, which seems about to collapse any second. A large gash in his right lower chest is dripping blood, probably from a lacerated pulmonary vessel, maybe even the vena cava, that is hemorrhaging into his chest cavity, rapidly decreasing cardiac output to his brain and other vital organs, including the right arm that is holding him up. Even today, unless emergency care was provided immediately, it is doubtful that modern medical science could save our Gaul. In addition to the beauty of the male body, the sculptor knew much about the anatomy of dying—his right ribs are retracted with deep furrows between them, suggesting that the right lung has collapsed, and the wrinkled skin of his contracted scrotum reflects the body’s intense adrenaline rush under extreme stress. The Gaul is sitting on his shield, and a broken sword and a curved trumpet lie at his side.  

 

This is the Dying Gaul, a depiction of the ethos and pathos of the penultimate moment. For some time after its discovery in the early 17th century, people thought that the sculpture portrayed a dying gladiator, but the spikey hairstyle, moustache, and torc necklace ultimately identified him as a Celt. Plus, his nakedness was typical of such warriors, who preferred to let it all hang out as they charged the foe, their feral shouts and screams terrorizing the enemy. In a side room on the ground floor beneath you lies yet another elaborately carved sarcophagus, which depicts the unimaginable violence and chaos of such battles—naked barbarians, with torc necklaces like our Gaul’s, are being trampled to death by mounted Roman legionnaires.   

 

The statue is both heroic and tragic, both profound and mundane—his youth and classical beauty accentuate all of these viewpoints—and it should confront and force you to contemplate your own impending mortality. The Gaul is every man, facing the same moment of realization all of us will someday face, although perhaps not under the same circumstances. Whether we face our final moments in a hospital bed, about to drift into unconsciousness from the morphine given for our cancer pain, or as we struggle to get up from the pavement after being plowed into by a bus or knifed by a mugger, or as we stagger out of the rubble from a nuclear bomb—regardless of our mode of exit, we will face the same competing desires to hold on to life or to acquiesce and collapse into oblivion. Just as there is nothing noble or grand about our own deaths, so it is with the Gaul.

 

Is this warrior struggling to get up, to fight on, or is he ready to let go, to give in to the immense burdens and wounds pulling him down? What is he thinking about? His family at his home village, or his childhood, or his hatred of his enemy? From my many years of watching my patients going through this period of transition, I think it is safe to say that he is in another universe, his focus very constricted as he enters a world those of us still alive with halfway good health cannot imagine. As with my many patients drifting towards oblivion, he doesn’t need solicitous words of support from his battlefield comrades, or even tender words from his wife, who, as often was the case, accompanied the warrior armies. Perhaps, like Tolstoy’s Ivan Illich at his final moments, the Gaul is trying to put things right in his soul, to finally find “the real thing” about his life before it is extinguished forever. That he was a “barbarian” didn’t mean he lacked the same hopes, fears, and joys we have today. Lord Byron mused on the Gaul’s last thoughts:

 

“…where his rude hut by the Danube lay,
   There were his young-barbarians all at play,
        There was their Dacian mother—he, their sire”

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Our Gaul faces the same question most of us will someday face: when is it time to stop fighting and give up? It’s the conundrum many of my patients have had to face as they struggled with cancer, frailty, and the vicissitudes of advancing age. And as their doctor, many of my patients would press me to give them answers to end-of-life questions— “How much time do I have left, doc?”—which often cannot be answered. Maybe when I have to decide for my own self “when is enough enough?” will I fully appreciate what my patients—and our Gaul—have faced.

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In an insightful and moving analysis (July 15, 2016, vulture.com), Jerry Saltz observed that the real meaning of the Dying Gaul is deeply Greek and much different from the interpretations of the Romans and many modern observers. The Romans, always glorifying heroism and gallantry, most likely thought the sculptor was depicting strength and resolve in the face of profound adversity, that the Gaul was struggling to get up and continue his charge towards the enemy. The Greeks, always more nuanced and, well, philosophical than the Romans, probably looked on the Gaul as a human who was willing to finally accept his mortality, “submitting to the physical and profound mysteries at hand,” welcoming the end of a life of suffering and privation. Saltz concludes that “in encountering the sculpture, we are wrapped in death.”    

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Surrounding the Dying Gaul is a hodge-podge of a dozen or so busts and statues, all seemingly unconcerned about the Gaul’s final agony. Cupid and Psyche are in amorous embrace, each a bit tubby and hippy. The Resting Satyr, indifferent and almost leering, appears to be resting between orgies. A beautiful young Antinous seems to gaze vacantly at the Gaul, but no emotion crosses his graceful face. Antinous was a favorite of Emperor Hadrian, and indeed this piece was originally found at his estate outside of Rome. The large statue of Isis is stiff and detached, as a goddess should be. Only the Wounded Amazon could have any empathy with the Gaul, but she doesn’t appear to be facing her own impending mortality, at least yet. Each work, of course, is a masterpiece unto itself, usually a copy of the Greek original, and, as with the Gaul, each can stimulate the imagination and evoke fascinating speculation. Indeed, where in ancient Rome was the Dying Gaul proudly displayed, and how did it eventually come to us, not ending up in a lime kiln to provide mortar for a medieval hovel? We know it popped up in the early 1600s during excavations for a nobleman’s villa at the outskirts of Rome, in the area of the ancient Gardens of Caesar. Could it have once adorned a palace or temple? As Rome was pillaged over its final centuries, could barbarians not unlike our Gaul have glanced at the statue, as they upturned and rummaged through the decaying remains of an abandoned palace or mansion? How did the Gaul get buried under the detritus of the empire? Fire or flood? Earthquake? Or just the gradual accretions and overgrowth of the seemingly unending centuries of the Dark Ages?    

 

The Dying Gaul has always been a major sensation, from ancient times to the present. Over the centuries, it has been copied and written about many times, and it was one of the items on the “bucket list” of English dandies, poets, and historians taking the Grand Tour of Italy in the eighteenth century. In addition to Byron, other notables moved by this sculpture were Mark Twain, Henry James, and Thomas Jefferson. Napoleon sent it to Paris in 1797, but France eventually returned it. So you are among the legions who have, like me, stared dumbly at this masterpiece which encapsulates the final moments of the human experience. And like all the others, you and I will someday be no more. But perhaps as we are about to be pulled under and finally collapse on our own shields and swords, we might briefly think of the Dying Gaul, who, ironically, will not yet have died, outliving all of us, eternally suspended in the mystical limbo between life and death.