Laocoon
Greek classic for our times
Ignored and then killed for correctly exposing a ruse.
Laocoön and His Sons
The story of Laocoön had been the subject of a play by Sophocles (the play is now lost), and was mentioned by other Greek writers. Laocoön was killed after attempting to expose the ruse of the Trojan Horse by striking it with a spear. The snakes were sent by Poseidon[3] (although Athena or Apollo have also been suggested) and were interpreted by the Trojans as proof that the horse was a sacred object. The most famous account of these events is in Virgil‘s Aeneid (See theAeneid quotation at the entry Laocoön), but this very probably dates from after the sculpture was made.
Laocoön is a Trojan priest of Poseidon[2] (or Neptune), whose rules he had defied, either by marrying and having sons,[3] or by having committed an impiety by making love with his wife in the presence of a cult image in a sanctuary.[4] His minor role in the Epic Cyclenarrating the Trojan War was of warning the Trojans in vain against accepting the Trojan Horse from the Greeks—”A deadly fraud is this,” he said, “devised by the Achaean chiefs!”[5]—and his subsequent divine execution by two serpents sent to Troy across the sea from the island of Tenedos, where the Greeks had temporarily camped.[6]
Laocoön warned his fellow Trojans against the wooden horse presented to the city by the Greeks. In the Aeneid, Virgil gives Laocoön the famous line “Equō nē crēdite, Teucrī / Quidquid id est, timeō Danaōs et dōna ferentīs“, or “Do not trust the Horse, Trojans / Whatever it is, I fear the Greeks even bearing gifts.” This line is the source of the saying: “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.”
The most detailed description of Laocoön’s grisly fate was provided by Quintus Smyrnaeus inPosthomerica, a later, literary version of events following the Iliad. According to Quintus, Laocoön begged the Trojans to set fire to the horse to ensure it was not a trick. Athena, angry with him and the Trojans, shook the ground around Laocoön’s feet and painfully blinded him. The Trojans, watching this unfold, assumed Laocoön was punished for the Trojans’ mutilating and doubtingSinon, the undercover Greek soldier sent to convince the Trojans to let him and the horse inside their city walls. Thus, the Trojans wheeled the great wooden Horse in. Laocoön did not give up trying to convince the Trojans to burn the horse, and Athena makes him pay even further. She sends two giant sea serpents to strangle and kill him and his two sons.[7] In another version of the story, it was said that Poseidon sent the sea serpents to strangle and kill Laocoön and his two sons.