ring in
the sun, their eyes flashing, and their forked and venomous tongues
darting threats and defiance as they came. The people fled in dismay.
The serpents, disregarding all others, made their way directly toward
the affrighted children of Laocoon, and twining around them they soon
held the writhing and struggling limbs of their shrieking victims
hopelessly entangled in their deadly convolutions.

Laocoon, who was himself at a little distance from the spot, when the
serpents came, as soon as he saw the danger and heard the agonizing
cries of his boys, seized a weapon and ran to rescue them. Instead,
however, of being able to save his children, he only involved himself
in their dreadful fate. The serpents seized him as soon as he came
within their reach, and taking two turns around his neck and two
around his body, and binding in a remorseless grip the forms of the
fainting and dying boys with other convolutions, they raised their
heads high above the group of victims which they thus enfolded, and
hissed and darted out their forked tongues in token of defiance and
victory. When at length their work was done, they glided away and took
refuge in a temple that was near, and coiled themselves up for repose
beneath the feet of the statue of a goddess that stood in the shrine.

The story of Laocoon has become celebrated among all mankind in modern
times by means of a statue representing the catastrophe, which was
found two or three centuries ago among the ruins of an ancient edifice
at Rome. This statue was mentioned by an old Roman writer, Pliny, who
gave an account of it while it yet stood in its place in the ancient
city. He said that it was the work of three artists, a father and two
sons, who combined their industry and skill to carve in one group, and
with immense labor and care, the representation of Laocoon himself,
the two boys, and the two serpents, making five living beings
intertwined intricately together, and all carved from one single block
of marble. On the decline and fall of Rome this statue was lost among
the ruins of the city, and for many centuries it was known to mankind
only through the description of Pliny. At length it was brought to
light again, having been discovered about three centuries ago, under
the ruins of the very edifice in which Pliny had described it as
standing. It immediately became the object of great interest and
attention to the whole world. It was deposited in the Vatican; a great