LAOCOON. in fabulous history, the son, it is said, of Priam and Hecuba, and priest of Apollo. He opposed the design of the 'Trojans, to admit within their besieged city the wooden horse, containing the crafty Ulysses and the other Greeks ; and even dared to lance a dart at this fatal machine. But the artifice of Sinon, aided by the infatua tion of the Trojans, prevailed. At the very moment, when this insidious machine was about to be introduced within the walls of Troy, and while Laucoon was in the act of sa crificing to Neptune, two enormous serpents issued from the sea, and attacked his two sons, who stood next to the al tar. Having attempted to defend his sons, the serpents coiled themselves round him and his children, squeezed them in their complicated wreaths, and occasioned them all to expire in the greatest agonies.
The art of antiquity has conferred immortality upon this fabulous event, by one of the noblest monuments of Gre cian sculpture, executed in marble by Agisander, Polydo rus, and Athenodorns, the three famous artists of Rhodes, This monument was found at Rome, in the ruins of the pa lace of Titus, in the beginning of the 16th century, under the pontificate of Julius 11. and afterwards deposited in the Farnesc palace. When Italy was overrun by the French during the late revolution, this wonderful monument of an cient art was, with many others, removed from the Vatican, and placed in the Museum of Arts at Paris. Since their more recent reverses, however, it has been restored to its former owners.
Of the fact which has been so nobly represented by the efforts of the sculptor, Virgil has given us the following poetical description: The statue, which has been generally esteemed as one of the finest remains of antiquity, exhibits the most aston ishing dignity and tranquility of mind, in the midst of the most* excruciating torments. Of this group, Pliny says, 36,§ 5.) " that which has been injurious to the fame of certain individuals, in spite of the excellence of their pro ductions, is the circumstance of their having worked toge ther on the same piece ; since one alone cannot merit the honour of the whole, and we do not choose the trouble of naming them all. Such is the case respecting the Lao coon, in the palace of the Emperor Titus, which must be preferred to all the efforts of the painter's and of the sta tuary's art. Agisander, Polydorus, and Athenodorus, cele brated sculptors of Rhodes, united their joint abilities, in forming out of a single block the group of the father and his sons, bound. together by the beautiful folds of the ser
pents." The Laocoon, according to Dr. Gillies, may be re garded as the triumph of Grecian sculpture ; since bodily pain, the grossest and most ungovernable of all our pas sions, and that pain united with anguish and torture of mind, are yet expressed with such propriety and dignity, as afford lessons of fortitude superior to any taught in the schools of philosophy. The horrible shriek which Virgil's Laocoon emits is a proper circumstance for poetry, which speaks to the fancy by images and ideas borrowed from all the senses, and has a thousand ways of ennobling its object; but the expression of the shriek would have totally degrad ed the statue. It is softened, therefore, into a patient sigh, with the eyes turned to heaven in search of relief. The intolerable agony of suffering nature is represented in the lower parts, and particularly in the extremities of the body; but the manly breast struggles against calamity. The con tention is still more plainly perceived in his furrowed fore head ; and his languishing paternal eye demands assistance, less for himself than for his miserable children, who look up to him for help.
A variety of critical disquisitions have been written, for the purpose of ascertaining to what period of the arts this chef d'oeuvre belongs. Winklemann and Visconti ascribed it to the most brilliant period of the Greeks ; while Les sing, on the other hand, referred it to the times of the first Roman emperors. Visconti has since gone over to the opinion of Lessing, though he proceeds upon different grounds. Pliny says, the group was sculptured out of a single block ; Raphael, however, discovered three ; Mengs counted five ; and it appears in reality to consist of six, in cluding the plinth on which the altar rests, and to which the other pieces of the block are attached. The right arm of the father, and two of the arms of the children, are want ing. These deficiencies have been supplied by arms, moulded on the group in plaster of Paris. See Gillies' Hist. of Greece, ii. 177 ; Winkelmann's Inedited Monu ments ; Lessing's Laocoon ; the Description of the .dncient Monuments in the Museum Wapoleon, published at Paris in 1805 ; and Plate CCXX XIV. Fig. 1. of this work. (z)