The Ludovisi Gaul (sometimes called "The Galatian Suicide") is an ancient Roman statue depicting a Gallic man plunging a sword into his breast as he holds up the dead body of his wife.

The statue depicts a Gaulish man or Galatian Celt who has just killed his wife and is holding her lifeless body in one arm and a sword in another, in an attempt to commit suicide.

Hellenistic sculptures incorporated three main characteristics in their work to create a more lifelike aesthetic: expressive movement, realistic anatomy and ornate detail.

This group of statues was believed to be displayed in Pergamon, which used to be an important capital in the Greek Hellenistic world (dating from 323 to 31 B.C.E.,) is now close to the coast of modern-day Turkey.

[3] As visitors entered the Sanctuary of Athena in the third and second centuries B.C., art historians in the book, Pergamon and the Hellenistic Kingdoms of the Ancient World often ask the question, how would the sculptures and their staging be perceived and interpreted, as well as how we view them in the modern-day?

The area had been part of the Gardens of Sallust (formerly owned by Julius Caesar) in Classical times, and proved a rich source of Roman (and some Greek) sculpture through the 19th century (Haskell and Penny, 282).

Nicolas Poussin adapted the figure for the group in the right foreground of his Rape of the Sabine Women, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Friedlaender 19 and fig.

The expansion of the Celtic people (also known as the Galatians or the Gauls, as Romans called them, coming from their homelands in Central Europe in the south and east) was put on hold during the third century B.C.

The Gallic chief Brannos and his army had high hopes of taking the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi after having successfully overwhelmed the Greeks in a battle in Thermopylae.

After this event, the Greeks decorated Delphi with Gallic shields they obtained from the battle, built monuments, and statues of the gods to commemorate their victory.

The Greeks believed that the Gaul's unprecedented brutality should not be forgotten and that the women and children of Kallion near Delphi which they murdered should be remembered and honored.

It wasn't until the nineteenth century that these statues were connected to the works of Pliny the Elder which celebrated the victories of Pergamon over the Gauls of Asia Minor and were reinterpreted as Celtic warriors.