ONLINE ETYMOLOGY
DICTIONARY
- Trojan priest of Apollo, from Latin Laocoon, from Greek Laukoun, from laos "people" (see lay (adj.)) + koeo "I mark, perceive."
Laocoön, n. A famous piece of antique sculpture representing a priest of that time and his two sons in the folds of two enormous serpents. The skill and diligence with which the old man and lads support the serpents and keep them up in their work have been justly regarded as one of the noblest artistic illustrations of the mastery of human intelligence over brute inertia. [Ambrose Bierce, "Devil's Dictionary," 1911]
- WIKIPEDIA
Laocoön ( /leɪˈɒkɵ.ɒn/;
Ancient Greek:
Λαοκόων, IPA: [laokóɔːn])
the son of Acoetes[1]
is a figure in Greek
and Roman
mythology.
Laocoön is a Trojan
priest of
Poseidon[2]
(or Neptune),
whose rules he had defied, either by marrying and having sons,[3]
or by having committed an impiety by making love with his wife in the
presence of a cult
image in a sanctuary.[4]
His minor role in the Epic
Cycle narrating the Trojan
War was of warning the Trojans in vain against accepting the
Trojan Horse
from the Greeks—"A
deadly fraud is this," he said, "devised by the Achaean
chiefs!"[5]—and
his subsequent divine execution by two serpents sent to Troy across
the sea from the island of Tenedos,
where the Greeks had temporarily camped.[6]
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."
You don't suppose the name is based on two root words; "Laos" and "Kuon" which would apply to a "Cynic" or the abjections he made to the accepting of the Trojan Horse as a gift?
ReplyDeleteWouldn't that then make cynicism a virtue in some instances since accepting that gift came with a terrible price hence the reason for the myth; a tale of morality or wisdom in human nature? Furthermore, since the people of Troy were in fact once Greeks displaced by the Minoans doesn't it also infer that the "Trojans" being Greeks should know themselves, their hearts, that they have a skill or history at using deception to gain advantage making the statement "I fear the Greeks even when bearing gifts" an emphasis to the point that in order to know your enemy you must first know yourself so that cynicism has a veritable place in honest evaluation? That "evaluation" by "cynicism" is then an attribute of the gods since only they can be both good and evil or amoral and by using a godly virtue or mimicking one that is the actual crime for which the serpents are dispatched against him?
"Do as I say not as I do" or face the consequences; blind faith. Poseidon felt that the Trojans must accept the gift and suffer the results and to ensure that they did accept it he killed Laocoon in a manner deceptive by tricking the Trojans into believing he was on their side and punished Laos for his actions in regards to the statue?