LANZI, LuIGI, a celebrated Italian antiquary, was born at Monte dell' Olmo, near Macerata, June 14, 1732. He entered the order of the Jesuits, and resided at Rome, and afterwards at Florence, where he died Mar. 30, 1810. In 1782 he published at Florence his Deserizione della Galleria di Firenze. His great works, distinguished for their pro found erudition, are his &uggio di Lingua Etmsea (3 vols. Rome, 1789), in which, con trary to the prevalent opinion among Italian savants, he maintains the influence of Greece upon Etruscan civilization. and his Storia Pittorica d'Italia, etc. (Florence, 1792; and Bassano, 1789 and 1806). This latter work -has been translated into English by Thomas Roscoe (Bohn's standard library, 3 vols. 1847). He is the author also of several poems,works on Etruscan vases, sculptures, etc. His posthumous works were published m 2 vols. at Florence in 1S17.
according to classic legend, a priest either of Apollo or Neptune, in who in vain warned his countrymenof the deceit practiced by the Greeks in their pre tended offering of the wooden horse to Minerva, and was destroyed along with his Mc sons by two enormous serpents which came from the sea. They first fastened on his
children, and when he attempted to rescue them, involved himself in their coils. This legend is not Homeric, but of later origin. It was. however. a favothe theme of the Greek poets, and is introduced in the .rtneid of Virgil. It acquires a peculiar intere,_: from being the subject of one of the most famous works of ancient sculpture still in existence: a group discovered in 1506 at Rome, in the Sette Sale, on the side of the Esquiline hill, and purchased by pope Julius II. for the Vatican. It was carried to Paris, but recovered in 1814. The whole treatment of the subject, the anatomical accu racy of the figures, and the representation both of bodily pain and of passion, have always commanded the highest admiration. According to Pliny, it was the work of the Rhodian artists Agesander, Polydorus, and Athenodorus, but this is doubtful. Casts of it are to be found in every European museum. For an cesthetic exposition of its merits, see Lessing's celebrated Laocoon oder iiber die Grenzen der Malerei and Poesie.