Lying on the ground, this dying Gaul truly looks as if he has fallen harshly. Every motion of his body reads heavy and weighted, one leg stretched out as the other curls towards him, bending over himself with a heavy hand on one knee. His right arm seems to be just struggling to hold himself up, his wound visible, cut across his side with marble drips running down his skin. His face shows a grimace of pain, mouth snarled in a seeming silent sound of agony. A moustache sits just above his upper lip, and his hair is short and cropped, seemingly mussed and messy, very unlike the clean-shaven and curly-headed Greeks. The only thing he wears is a twisted rope necklace at the base of his neck, the rest of his body spread nude. The veins in his feet seem strained, his body in a twist to the right as he leans over in his pain. At one side lays a sword he has dropped, beneath his arm, and between his legs some kind of horn instrument. The pain pre-death seems to have been captured perfectly in this stunning marble.
Carolyn, beautifully done and elegant -- except at thye end, where you stumble a little.
ReplyDelete"At one side lays a sword he has dropped, beneath his arm, and between his legs some kind of horn instrument."
The second part of this sentence lacks precision: unlike other sentences, I don't know what you mean here.
"The pain pre-death seems to have been captured perfectly in this stunning marble."
I appreciate the "pain pre-death" phrase, but I'm not sure you need this sentence, except perhaps to pad out the word count.
Very good overall:
9/10