Epigonus

Biography

Epigonus’s bronzes have not come down to us. What remains are the bases carrying his name: seven or eight were found at Pergamum, and the sources give different numbers. The statues that stood on them were, it seems, cut up and melted down for the metal.

Very little is known about the sculptor himself. He came from Pergamum, his father was called Charios, and he worked at the Attalid court. His dates are unknown: the main evidence falls in the period from about 263 to 222 BCE, and his death is placed at the end of the third century BCE. The only ancient author who names him as the maker of works is Pliny the Elder, and it is from Pliny’s list of Pergamene sculptors that we know Epigonus was among those who worked on the victory monument in the sanctuary of Athena on the acropolis.

The monument was set up by Attalus I to commemorate his victory over the Galatians, the Celtic peoples of Asia Minor, won around 223 BCE (the sources disagree; by other accounts the victory belongs to 237). Pliny attributes to Epigonus a “Trumpeter” and a group, “an infant pitifully caressing its murdered mother”. A male figure from the same ensemble was probably the original of the Roman marble copy known as the “Dying Gaul” (Capitoline Museums, Rome). On the ground beside the wounded body of the Gaul lies a curved Celtic horn. Plutarch mentions a similar sculpture but does not name its maker.

Another work from the same circle survives in a marble copy: the “Gaul Killing Himself and His Wife”, formerly in the Ludovisi collection. The child caressing its murdered mother is, by one suggestion, connected with the so-called “Dead Amazon” in the National Archaeological Museum in Naples. In Renaissance drawings this figure still has the child, and in the sixteenth century it was, apparently, removed during restoration. These identifications are hypothetical: we are dealing with copies, not originals, and the link to Epigonus rests on Pliny’s text.

The inscriptions on the bases let us follow the sculptor’s career further back than Pliny does. The earliest relates to a bronze chariot of Attalus, the father of the future king, on the acropolis of Pergamum, set up to honour an Olympic victory, before 263 BCE. Other signatures are tied to monuments of Attalus I’s victories over Antiochus and his allies the Galatians, around 222 BCE. Judging by the number and character of these commissions, Epigonus was the most important sculptor in Pergamum of his time, and one of the few court artists who came from the city itself.

He worked in bronze. Roman marble copies convey the poses and subjects, but not how the metal original looked.

Pliny praised his “Trumpeter”; a copy of this statue is linked with the Louvre. Later ancient sculptors, among them the Ephesians named Agasias, imitated his works.