Hellenistic art struck out a new path in a class of reliefs of which Figs. 181 and 182 are examples.  There are some restorations.  A gulf separates these works from the friezes of the Parthenon and the Mausoleum.  Whereas relief-sculpture in the classical period abjured backgrounds and picturesque accessories, we find here a highly pictorial treatment.  The subjects moreover are, in the instances chosen, of a character to which Greek sculpture before Alexander’s time hardly offers a parallel (yet cf.  Fig. 87).  In Fig. 181 we see a ewe giving suck to her lamb.  Above, at the right, is a hut or stall, from whose open door a dog is just coming out; at the left is an oak tree.  In Fig. 182 a lioness crouches with her two cubs.  Above is a sycamore tree, and to the right of it a group of objects which tell of the rustic worship of Bacchus.  Each of the two reliefs decorated a fountain or something of the sort.  In the one the overturned milk-jar served as a water-spout; in the other the open mouth of one of the cubs answered the same purpose.  Generally speaking, the pictorial reliefs seem to have been used for the interior decoration of private and public buildings.  By their subjects many of them bear witness to that love of country life and that feeling for the charms of landscape which are the most attractive traits of the Hellenistic period.

The kingdom of Pergamum in western Asia Minor was one of the smaller states formed out of Alexander’s dominions.  The city of Pergamum became a center of Greek learning second only to Alexandria in importance.  Moreover, under Attalus I. (241-197 B.C.) and Eumenes II. (197-159 B.C.) it developed an independent and powerful school of sculpture, of whose productions we fortunately possess numerous examples.  The most famous of these is the Dying Gaul or Galatian (Fig. 183), once erroneously called the Dying Gladiator.  Hordes of Gauls had invaded Asia Minor as early as 278 B.C., and, making their headquarters in the interior, in the district afterwards known from them as Galatia, had become the terror and the scourge of the whole region.  Attalus I. early in his reign gained an important victory over these fierce tribes, and this victory was commemorated by extensive groups of sculpture both at Pergamum and at Athens.  The figure of the Dying Gaul belongs to this series.  The statue was in the possession of Cardinal Ludovisi as early as 1633, along with a group closely allied in style, representing a Gaul and his wife, but nothing is certainly known as to the time and place of its discovery.  The restorations are said to be:  the tip of the nose, the left knee-pan, the toes, and the part of the plinth on which the right arm rests,[Footnote:  Helbig, “Guide to the Public Collections of Classical Antiquities in Rome,” Vol I, No 533.] together with the objects on it.  That the man represented is not a Greek is evident from the large hands and feet, the coarse skin, the un-Greek character of the head (Fig. 184).  That