LAOCOON AGAIN

Laocoon may have been invented by Arctinus or a predecessor, as a male counterpart of Cassandra: or he may have been a leading figure in a separate cycle centring on the cult of Thymbraean Apollo. His story caught the attention of post-Homeric poets and painters, and developed, if it did not already possess, a mythology of its own. To Vergil, it was part of the workings of destiny, and one, perhaps the most spectacular and horrifying, of the human tragedies which ultimately led to the consummation of history in the foundation of Rome and the establishment of the Augustan Empire.