At station 7 our hero falls again—as does this contemporary of Jesus, The Falling Gladiator, sculpted by Boston-based artist William Rimmer. Rimmer practiced medicine for years before turning to sculpting and painting in the late 1850s, eventually leaving the medical field to start an art school. His remarkable command of anatomy enabled him to create very lifelike figures, like this mortally wounded gladiator toppling backward while trying to draw his opponent’s sword out of his back. The sculpture was completed in January 1861—a tenuous time in America, as six states had seceded from the Union; just three months later, the Civil War began. When young American men at their physical prime started falling to each other’s gunfire, Rimmer’s sculpture gained a new resonance.