拉奥孔

梵蒂冈博物馆所藏的雕像拉奥孔与儿子们

拉奥孔(Λαοκόων [laok'ooːn]）是Acoetes之子，特洛伊人，波塞冬或阿波罗的祭司。由于他结婚生子而违反了神的旨意，或是因为与妻子当着神殿中的神像交媾而犯了亵渎之罪。他在古希腊史诗中扮演的小角色是在特洛伊战争中警告特洛伊人不要接受希腊人留下的木马，但没有成功。随后他就被两条从希腊人临时驻扎的Tenedos岛上跨海而来的大蛇夺去了性命。

Laocoön warned his fellow Trojans against the wooden horse presented to the city by the Greeks. 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." This line is the source of the saying: "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts."

The most detailed description of Laocoön's grisly fate was provided by Quintus Smyrnaeus in Posthomerica, a later, literary version of events following the Iliad. Virgil employed the motif in the Aeneid; the Trojans, according to Virgil, disregarded his advice, however, and were taken in by the deceitful testimony of Sinon; in his resulting anger Laocoön threw his spear at the Horse. Minerva, who was supporting the Greeks, at this moment sent sea-serpents to strangle Laocoön and his two sons, Antiphantes and Thymbraeus. "Laocoön, ostensibly sacrificing a bull to Neptune on behalf of the city (lines 201ff.), becomes himself the tragic victim, as the simile (lines 223-24) makes clear. In some sense, his death must be symbolic of the city as a whole," S.V. Tracy notes. According to the Hellenistic poet Euphorion of Chalcis, Laocoon 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. The episode furnished the subject of Sophocles' lost tragedy, Laocoön.

In Aeneid Virgil describes the circumstances of Laocoön's death:

From the Aeneid

Ille simul manibus tendit divellere nodos

perfusus sanie vittas atroque veneno,

clamores simul horrendos ad sidera tollit:

qualis mugitus, fugit cum saucius aram

taurus et incertam excussit cervice securim.

Literal English translation:

At the same time he stretched forth to tear the knots with his hands

his fillets soaked with saliva and black venom

at the same time he lifted to heaven horrendous cries:

like the bellowing when a wounded bull has fled from the altar

and has shaken the ill-aimed axe from its neck.

John Dryden's translation:

With both his hands he labors at the knots;

His holy fillets the blue venom blots;

His roaring fills the flitting air around.

Thus, when an ox receives a glancing wound,

He breaks his bands, the fatal altar flies,

And with loud bellowings breaks the yielding skies.

The death of Laocoön was famously depicted in a much-admired marble Lacoön and His Sons, attributed by Pliny the Elder to the Rhodian sculptors Agesander, Athenodoros, and Polydorus), which stands in the Vatican Museums, Rome. Copies have been executed by various artists, notably Baccio Bandinelli. These show the complete sculpture (with conjectural reconstructions of the missing pieces) and can be seen in Rome, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and in front of the Archaeological Museum, Odessa, Ukraine, amongst others.

The marble Laocoön provided the central image for Lessing's Laocoön, 1766, an aesthetic polemic directed again Winckelmann and the comte de Caylus. Daniel Albright reengages the role of the figure of Laocoön in aesthetic thought in his book Untwisting the Serpent: Modernism in Literature, Music, and Other Arts.

In addition to other literary references, John Barth employs a bust of Laocoön in his novella, The End of the Road. Laocoön "and her two sons" appear in the R.E.M. song, "Laughing," on "Murmur." The marble's pose is parodied in Asterix and the Laurel Wreath.

Classical sources

Arctinus, OCT Homer 5.107.23; pseudo-Apollodorus, Epitome 5.18; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 1.48.2; Petronius 89; Servius on Aeneid 2.201; Hyginus, Fabula 135; Quintus Smyrnaeus, Posthomerica 12.445ff; John Tzetzes, Ad Lycophron 347.

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External links

• Laocoon photos