He struggles to tear
them away, but they overpower all his efforts and strangle him and
the children in their poisonous folds. This event was regarded as
a clear indication of the displeasure of the gods at Laocoon's
irreverent treatment of the wooden horse, which they no longer
hesitated to regard as a sacred object, and prepared to introduce
with due solemnity into the city. This was done with songs and
triumphal acclamations, and the day closed with festivity. In the
night the armed men who were enclosed in the body of the horse,
being let out by the traitor Sinon, opened the gates of the city
to their friends, who had returned under cover of the night. The
city was set on fire; the people, overcome with feasting and
sleep, put to the sword, and Troy completely subdued.
One of the most celebrated groups of statuary in existence is that
of Laocoon and his children in the embrace of the serpents. A cast
of it is owned by the Boston Athenaeum; the original is in the
Vatican at Rome. The following lines are from the "Childe Harold"
of Byron:
"Now turning to the Vatican go see
Laocoon's torture dignifying pain;
A father's love and mortal's agony
With an immortal's patience blending;--vain
The struggle! vain against the coiling strain
And gripe and deepening of the dragon's grasp
The old man's clinch; the long envenomed chain
Rivets the living links; the enormous asp
Enforces pang on pang and stifles gasp on gasp.
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