LAOCOON, in the history of the arts, is a celebrated monument of Greek sculpture, executed in marble by Agesander, Polydorus, and Athenodorus, the three famous artists of Rhodes. Agesander is supposed to have been the father of the two latter. This remain of antiquity was found at Rome in the ruins of the palace of Titus, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, under the pontificate of Julius II. and afterwards deposited in the Farnese Palace. Laocoön, the priest of Apollo and Neptune, is here represented, along with his two sons, with two hideous serpents clinging round his body, gnawing it, and injecting their
poison. This statue exhibits the most astonishing dignity and tranquillity of mind in the midst of the most excruciating torments. Pliny1 says of it, that it is Opus omnibus pictoræ ex statuaria artis, præferendum.