Laocoon
A priest of Apollo who in the Trojan war was opposed to the admission of the wooden horse to the city. For this, as a punishment, two enormous serpents were sent to attack him, which they did while, accompanied by his two sons, he was offering a sacrifice to Neptune. The serpents coiled round him and his sons, and crushed them to death. Lord Byron, in Childe Harold, canto iv., thus alludes to the Laocoon group in marble in the Vatican : "Or, 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 clench; the long, envenom'd chain Rivets the living links-the enormous asp Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp on gasp."