Laocoön

Laocoön (; Ancient Greek: Λᾱοκόων, romanized: Lāokóōn) was a Trojan priest in Greek and Roman mythology. He is first attested in the 7th-century BC epic Iliupersis by Arctinus of Miletus, part of the Epic Cycle. In ancient tradition, Laocoön served as a priest of either Apollo Thymbraeus or Poseidon. Accounts of his transgressions and death vary considerably. In early Greek sources, he was punished by Apollo for breaking a vow of celibacy or fathering children in the god's sanctuary, with serpents killing his sons or both him and one son. In the better-known Roman tradition developed in Virgil's Aeneid, Laocoön was killed after warning the Trojans against the Trojan Horse and striking it with a spear, whereupon two sea serpents crushed him and both of his sons. The myth was dramatized in Sophocles' lost tragedy Laocoön and inspired the Hellenistic marble sculpture Laocoön and His Sons, excavated in Rome in 1506. The statue became a focal point of 18th-century European aesthetic theory, notably in the work of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing.