-->
- Laocoon=لاوكون
ONLINE ETYMOLOGY
DICTIONARY
- Laocoon
- 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 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."
