The myth of Laocoön is as twisted as his body in Laocoön and His Sons.

It was the early 12th century and the people of Troy were at war with the Greeks. The Trojan War was in its tenth year and the Greeks were losing hope of breaking through Troy’s city walls. They decided to switch their plan of attack from force to deception. The Greeks secretly built a gigantic wooden horse, stuffed hundreds of soldiers inside, and offered it up to the Trojans as a symbol of their surrender. The Trojans must have been a bunch of horse girls because as soon as they saw the gift from the Greeks, they began to party. Laocoön, the Trojan’s chief priest of Poseidon, was the only Trojan who wasn’t convinced of the Greeks’ good intentions. As the people of Troy drank and celebrated the arrival of their new steed, Laocoön pleaded with his friends and family not to bring the wooden horse into the city walls. Laocoön was raining on the Trojans’ parade and since no one likes a party pooper, everyone dismissed his words of warning. 

Laocoön decided to turn to the gods for guidance and sacrificed a bull in honor of Poseidon, along with the help of his two sons. While the men were distracted, two massive sea serpents suddenly appeared and viciously attacked the trio. The serpents started with Laocoön’s sons, each constricting and biting one boy while Laocoön helplessly watched from the sidelines. As Laocoön reached for his weapon, the serpents turned their focus onto the priest and began to wrap him tighter and righter, slowly crushing his bones and eventually squeezing out his final breath. 

Sea serpents don’t just slither out of the depths and massacre a family of their own accord, so the million dollar question is: who sent the beasts? The poet Virgil claimed that it was Athena, the goddess of war, because she wanted to punish Laocoön for meddling with the Greeks’ plan. On the other hand, the Greek scholar Apollodorus wrote that Laocoön had sex with his wife in Apollo’s temple, so the sun god sought his revenge. Whoever the culprit, the outcome was the same, and without Laocoön to gripe about the Trojans, the Trojan Horse was brought into the city walls. That night, Troy was overrun with angry Greeks (no doubt annoyed at being stuck in a horse for one too many hours) and the city was sacked. A true “I told you so” moment for Laocoön - though he didn't even get to enjoy it. 

In 77 C.E., Pliny the Elder, a Roman scholar, admired the Hellenistic statue group while visiting the house of Emperor Titus. He was so absorbed by Laocoön’s agony that he wrote about the artwork in his encyclopedia of all known knowledge, The Natural History, claiming the piece was superior to all others. Owning a sculpture with Pliny’s seal of approval must have been the ultimate goal for an antiquary like Pope Julius II. So, in 1506, when a farmer on Esquiline Hill excavated Laocoön and His Sons in his vineyard, Pope Julius II was more than interested in the farmer’s claim. He sent a team of antiquity aficionados, including Michelangelo, to analyze the statue before snatching it up for his own collection.

In his encyclopedia, Pliny attributed Laocoön and His Sons to the sculpting team of  Athanadoros, Hagesandros, and Polydoros of Rhodes, but no signature was found on the newly unearthed statue, so the authenticity of the piece was scrutinized. As the inspection of Laocoön and His Sons continued, more discrepancies between the artwork and Pliny’s description were revealed. Pope Julius II ended up overlooking these inconsistencies and bought Laocoön and His Sons to show off in his private statue garden. 

After Laocoön and His Sons arrived at the Vatican, other classical scholars joined in on the analysis of the sculpture and its provenance. One scholar proclaimed that the Vatican’s Laocoön and His Sons was a forgery made during the Renaissance by Michelangelo, while others argued that it was pillaged by Roman soldiers from Greece during the late Republic. Some art historians suspect the sculpture is a Roman copy of a much earlier Greek original, and others contend that it was commissioned by a wealthy Roman, crafted on the Greek island of Rhodes, and then transported to Italy. However, the most widely accepted origin story for this Laocoön and His Sons is simply that it was sculpted in Rome for a Roman patron between 150 B.C.E and 70 C.E.

Wherever and whenever it came from doesn’t matter much when you are standing in front of the larger-than-life statue group at the Vatican. Nearly 1950 years after Pliny was awestruck by the imposing sculpture,  Laocoön and His Sons continues to captivate museum-goers from around the world and teach the invaluable life lesson to always be just as wary of sea serpents as you are of horses.