Pergamon
Pergamon lies on the north edge of the Caicus plain in the historic region of Mysia in the northwest of Turkey. The Caicus river breaks through the surrounding mountains and hills at this point and flows in a wide arc to the southwest. At the foot of the mountain range to the north, between the rivers Selinus and Cetius, there is the massif of Pergamon which rises 335 metres above sea level. The site is only 26 km from the sea, but the Caicus plain is not open to the sea, since the way is blocked by the Karadağ massif. As a result, the area has a strongly inland character. In Hellenistic times, the town of Elaia at the mouth of the Caicus served as the port of Pergamon. The climate is Mediterranean with a dry period from May to August, as is common along the west coast of Asia Minor.
Epigonus
Epigonus () of Pergamum was the chief among the court sculptors to the Attalid dynasty at Pergamum in the late third century BCE. Pliny the Elder, who offers the only surviving list of the sculptors of this influential Pergamene school, attributes to him works among the sculptures on the victory monument erected by Attalus I in the sanctuary of Athena at Pergamum to commemorate his victory over the Gauls of Galatia (223 BCE). Among works there by other sculptors, Pliny attributes to Epigonos a masterful "Trumpeter" and "his infant pitiably engaged in caressing its murdered mother"; the male figure in his group, once part of the dedication of Attalus I at Pergamon, is probably the original of the marble copy known in modern times as "The Dying Gaul", in the Capitoline Museums, Rome. The "Weeping Child pitifully caressing its murdered mother" is "associated with the so-called "Dead Amazon" in Naples, a copy of a group which was once part of the later, second Gallic dedication of Attalos, at Athens... From drawings of this composition made in the Renaissance, we learn that the child was removed from the Naples statue during the sixteenth century". Another sculpture from the same monument exists in marble copy of the "Gaul Killing Himself and His Wife", formerly in the Ludovisi collection. Eight signed bases from the acropolis of Pergamon have lost their sculptures of valuable bronze, which was doubtless laboriously cut apart for the sake of the metal and refounded during Christian times.