Laocoon: Hellenistic sculpture (ca. 50-25 BCE), possibly by Rhodian sculptors

Laocoon, a Trojan prophet, argues against taking the wooden horse into the city and urges the Trojans to destroy it. The Roman poet Virgil in his epic Aeneid (2.40-56, 199-234) tells the story:

Next thing we knew, in front of everyone,
Laocoon with a great company
Came furiously running from the Height,
And still far off cried out: "O my poor people,
Men of Troy, what madness has come over you?
Can you believe the enemy truly gone?
A gift from the Danaans, and no ruse?
Is that Ulysses' way, as you have known him?
Achaeans must be hiding in this timber,
Or it was built to butt against our walls,
Peer over them into our houses, pelt
The city from the sky. Some crookedness
Is in this thing. Have no faith in the horse!
Whatever it is, even when Greeks bring gifts
I fear them, gifts and all."
		         He broke off then
And rifled his big spear with all his might
Against the horse's flank, the curve of belly.
It stuck there trembling, and the rounded hull
Reverberated groaning at the blow.
If the gods' will had not been sinister,
If our own minds had not been crazed,
He would have made us foul that Argive den
With bloody steel, and Troy would stand today-
O citadel of Priam, towering still!
.     .     .     .     .     .      .     .
And now another sign, more fearful still, 

Broke on our blind miserable people,
Filling us all with dread. Laocoon,
Acting as Neptune's priest that day by lot,
Was on the point of putting to the knife
A massive bull before the appointed altar,
When ah—look there!
From Tenedos, on the calm sea, twin snakes—
I shiver to recall it—endlessly
Coiling, uncoiling, swam abreast for shore,
Their underbellies showing as their crests
Reared red as blood above the swell; behind
They glided with great undulating backs.
While with both hands he fought to break the knots,
Drenched in slime, his head-bands black with venom,
Sending to heaven his appalling cries
Like a slashed bull escaping from an altar,
The fumbled axe shrugged off. The pair of snakes
Now flowed away and made for the highest shrines,
The citadel of pitiless Minerva,
Where coiling they took cover at her feet
Under the rondure of her shield. New terrors
Ran in the shaken crowd: the word went round
Laocoon had paid, and rightfully,
For profanation of the sacred hulk
With his offending spear hurled at its flank.

     Translation by Robert Fitzgerald