LAOCOON’S AGONY The famous group of the Trojan priest Laocoon and his sons was unearthed in Rome in 1506 in the presence of the great Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo. The marble group, long believed an original of the second century BCE, was found in the remains of the palace of the emperor Titus (r. 79-81 CE), exactly where Pliny had seen it more than 14 centuries before. Pliny attributed the statue to three sculptors – ATHANADOROS, HAGESANDROS, AND POLYDOROS OF RHODES – who are now generally thought to have worked in the early first century CE. They probably based their group on a Hellenistic masterpiece depicting Laocoon and only one son. Their variation on the original added the son at Laocoon’s left (note the greater compositional integration of the two other figures) to conform with the Roman poet Vergil’s account in the Aeneid. Vergil vividly described the strangling of Laocoon and his two sons by sea serpents while sacrificing at an altar. The gods who favored the Greeks in the war against Troy had sent the serpents to punish Laocoon, who had tried to warn his compatriots about the danger of bringing the Greeks’ wooden horse within the walls of their city. In Vergil’s graphic account, Laocoon suffered in terrible agony, and the torment of the priest and his sons is communicated in a spectacular fashion in the marble group. The three Trojans writhe in pain as they struggle to free themselves from the death grip of the serpents. The serpent-entwined figures recall the suffering giants of the great frieze of the Altar of Zeus at Pergamon, and Laocoon himself is strikingly similar to Alkyoneos, Athena’s opponent. In fact, many scholar believe that a Pergamene statuary group of the second century BCE was the inspiration for the three Rhodian sculptors.  

 ATHANADOROS, HAGESANDROS, and POLYDOROS OF RHODES, Laocoon and his Sons, from Rome, Italy, early first century CE. Marble, approx.. 7’10” high. Vatican Museums, Rome. **************************************************from The Aeneid Part II - VIrgil Laocoön, chosen by lot as priest of Neptune, was sacrificing a huge bull at the customary altar. See, a pair of serpents with huge coils, snaking over the sea from Tenedos through the tranquil deep (I shudder to tell it), and heading for the shore side by side: their fronts lift high over the tide, and their blood-red crests top the waves, the rest of their body slides through the ocean behind, and their huge backs arch in voluminous folds. There’s a roar from the foaming sea: now they reach the shore, and with burning eyes suffused with blood and fire, lick at their hissing jaws with flickering tongues. Blanching at the sight we scatter. They move on a set course towards Laocoön: and first each serpent entwines the slender bodies of his two sons, and biting at them, devours their wretched limbs: then as he comes to their aid, weapons in hand, they seize him too, and wreathe him in massive coils: now encircling his waist twice, twice winding their scaly folds around his throat, their high necks and heads tower above him. He strains to burst the knots with his hands, his sacred headband drenched in blood and dark venom, while he sends terrible shouts up to the heavens, like the bellowing of a bull that has fled wounded, from the altar, shaking the useless axe from its neck. But the serpent pair escape, slithering away to the high temple, and seek the stronghold of fierce Pallas, to hide there under the goddess’s feet, and the circle of her shield.