Laocoön (;, ) the son of Acoetes is a figure in Greek and Roman mythology.

In the Aeneid, Virgil gives Laocoön the famous line Equo ne credite, Teucri / Quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentes, or " Do not trust the Horse, Trojans / Whatever it is, I fear the Greeks even bearing gifts.

According to the Hellenistic poet Euphorion of Chalcis, Laocoön is in fact punished for procreating upon holy ground sacred to Poseidon ; only unlucky timing caused the Trojans to misinterpret his death as punishment for striking the Horse, which they bring into the city with disastrous consequences.

It is also during this period that skeptics allege Michelangelo executed the sculpture Laocoön and His Sons which resides in the Vatican.

Laocoön and his Sons in the Vatican Museums | Vatican which is among the works under the care of the Pontifical Commission for the Cultural Heritage of the Church

All the Trojans believe this story, except Laocoön who, along with his two sons, is promptly attacked by a giant sea serpent.

Similar traits can be seen in the Laocoön group which is a reworked copy of a lost original that was likely close both in time and place of origin to Nike, but while Laocoon, vastly admired by Renaissance and classicist artists, has come to be seen as a more self-conscious and contrived work, Nike of Samothrace is seen as an iconic depiction of triumphant spirit and of the divine momentarily coming face to face with man.

The statue of Laocoön and His Sons (), also called the Laocoön Group, is a monumental sculpture in marble now in the Vatican Museums, Rome.

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.

The most famous account of these events is in Virgil's Aeneid ( See the Aeneid quotation at the entry Laocoön ), but this very probably dates from after the sculpture was made.

Interestingly, the figure of Alcyoneus on the Pergamon Altar ( dated ca 180-160 BC ) is shown in a pose and situation ( including serpents ) which is very similar to those of Laocoön in the sculpture group.

The influence of the Laocoön is evidenced in many of Michelangelo's later works, such as the Rebellious Slave and the Dying Slave, created for the tomb of Pope Julius II.

Pliny's description of Laocoön as " a work to be preferred to all that the arts of painting and sculpture have produced " has led to a tradition which debates this claim that the sculpture is the greatest of all artworks.

The most unusual intervention in the debate is William Blake's annotated print Laocoön, which surrounds the image with graffiti-like commentary in several languages, written in multiple directions.

Near the end of Charles Dickens ' A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge comments that he was " making a perfect Laocoön of himself with his stockings " which is a direct reference to the statue of Laocoön since Scrooge is in such a rush to get dressed that he becomes entangled in his clothes.

Cassandra and Laocoön proclaim that there is an armed force of Greeks inside, but others say it is a holy relic of Athena.

The god Poseidon, meanwhile, sends an ill omen of two snakes which kill Laocoön and his sons ; seeing this, Aeneas and his men leave Troy in anticipation of what is to come.

In the Aeneid, a pair of sea serpents killed Laocoön and his sons when Laocoön argued against bringing the Trojan Horse into Troy.

While questioning Sinon, the Trojan priest Laocoön guesses the plot and warns the Trojans, in Virgil's famous line " Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes " ( I fear Greeks even those bearing gifts ), which became known as ' beware of Greeks bearing gifts ," Danaos being the ones who built the Trojan Horse.

The Trojans brought the Trojan Horse into their city against the advice of Cassandra ( given the gift of prophecy by Apollo, but condemned to never be believed for not returning his love ) and Laocoön ( because two serpents came out of the water and strangled him and his sons, which the Trojans saw as a punishment for attacking the horse with a spear ).

The Sack of Troy ( Iliou Persis ) told the stories of the Trojan Horse, Sinon, and Laocoön, the capture of the city, and the departure of the Greeks pursued by the anger of Athena at the rape of Cassandra by Ajax the Lesser.

It shows the Trojan priest Laocoön and his sons Antiphantes and Thymbraeus being strangled by sea serpents.

Laocoön was killed after attempting to expose the ruse of the Trojan Horse by striking it with a spear.

* Laocoön, the Trojan priest of Poseidon

The sculpture of Laocoön, the priest who, according to Greek mythology, tried to convince the people of ancient Troy not to accept the Greeks ' " gift " of a hollow horse, was discovered 14 January 1506, in a vineyard near the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome.

In another version of the story, it was said that Poseidon sent the sea serpents to strangle and kill Laocoön and his two sons.

On the way back, Odysseus ' ego gets the best of him and he tells the Gods that he did it himself, which angers Poseidon ( voiced by Miles Anderson ) to the point where he promises to make his journey home to Penelope nearly impossible even mentioning that he was the one who sent that sea monster to devour Laocoön.

" Laocoön, ostensibly sacrificing a bull to Neptune on behalf of the city ( lines 201ff.

File: Laocoon Pio-Clementino Inv1059-1064-1067. jpg | Laocoön and his Sons, Greek, ( Late Hellenistic ), circa 160 BC and 20 BC, White marble, Vatican Museum

Works of this period include: Apparition of Christ to the Virgin ( c. 1493, now in Munich ), Adoration of the Magi ( 1496, for the church of San Donato in Scopeto, now in the Uffizi ), Sacrifice of Laocoön ( end of the century, for the villa of Lorenzo de ' Medici at Poggio a Caiano ), St. John Baptist and Maddalena ( Valori Chapel in San Procolo, Florence, inspired in some way to Luca Signorelli's art ).

* Laocoön ( El Greco ), an oil painting by El Greco

Laocoön had insulted Apollo by sleeping with his wife in front of the " divine image ".

In the 1950s the museum decided that this arm — bent, as Michelangelo had suggested — had originally belonged to this Laocoön.

Serpents then came out of the sea and devoured either Laocoön and one of his two sons, Laocoön and both his sons, or only his sons, a portent which so alarmed the followers of Aeneas that they withdrew to Ida.

In 1794, France's revolutionary armies began bringing pieces from Northern Europe, augmented after the Treaty of Tolentino ( 1797 ) by works from the Vatican, such as Laocoön and His Sons and the Apollo Belvedere, to establish the Louvre as a museum and as a " sign of popular sovereignty ".

Laocoön warned his fellow Trojans against the wooden horse presented to the city by the Greeks.

The Trojans, according to Virgil, disregarded Laocoön's advice and were taken in by the deceitful testimony of Sinon ; in his resulting anger, Laocoön threw his spear at the Horse.

The death of Laocoön was famously depicted in a much-admired marble Laocoön and his Sons, attributed by Pliny the Elder to the Rhodian sculptors Agesander, Athenodoros, and Polydorus, which stands in the Vatican Museums, Rome.

The Brazen Serpent, by Benjamin West ; among the overthrown, an unmistakable reference to Laocoön and his Sons | the Laocoön

In Greek mythology, Porthaon (), sometimes referred to as Parthaon or Portheus, was the king of Calydon, husband of Euryte and father of Oeneus, Agrius, Alcathous, Melas, Leucopeus and Sterope, also of the Argonaut Laocoön by an unnamed female servant, or by Euryte too.

* Laocoön and his Sons by Agesander, in the Vatican Museums, Vatican City

The more open, planographic composition along a plane, used in the restoration of the Laocoön group, has been interpreted as " apparently the result of serial reworkings by Roman Imperial as well as Renaissance and modern craftsmen ".

In 1940 Clement Greenberg adapted the concept for his own essay entitled Towards a Newer Laocoön in which he argued that abstract art now provided an ideal for artists to measure their work against, and this title was copied by a 2007 exhibition at the Henry Moore Institute which exhibited work by modern artists influenced by the sculpture.