Epitome

Apollodorus

Apollodorus. The Library. Frazer, James George, Sir, editor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd. 1921

However, Apollo sent them a sign; for two serpents swam through the sea from the neighboring islands and devoured the sons of Laocoon.[*](Compare Arctinus, Ilii Persis, summarized by Proclus, in Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, p. 49; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Ant. Rom. i.48.2; Quintus Smyrnaeus, Posthomerica xii.444-497; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 347; Verg. A. 2.199-227; Hyginus, Fab. 135; Serv. Verg. A. 2.201; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 144ff. (Second Vatican Mythographer 207). According to Arctinus, our oldest authority for the tragedy of Laocoon, the two serpents killed Laocoon himself and one of his sons. According to Virgil, Hyginus, and Servius, they killed Laocoon and both his sons. According to Quintus Smyrnaeus, the serpents killed the two sons but spared the father, who lived to lament their fate. This last seems to have been the version followed by Apollodorus. The reason of the calamity which befell Laocoon is explained by Servius on the authority of Euphorion. He tells us that when the Greek army landed in the Troad, the Trojans stoned the priest of Poseidon to death, because he had not, by offering sacrifices to the sea god, prevented the invasion. Accordingly, when the Greeks seemed to be departing, it was deemed advisable to sacrifice to Poseidon, no doubt in order to induce him to give the Greeks a stormy passage. But the priesthood was vacant, and it was necessary to choose a priest by lot. The lot fell on Laocoon, priest of the Thymbraean Apollo, but he had incurred the wrath of Apollo by sleeping with his wife in front of the divine image, and for this sacrilege he perished with his two sons. This narrative helps us to understand the statement of Apollodorus that the two serpents were sent by Apollo for a sign. According to Tzetzes, the death of Laocoon's son took place in the temple of the Thymbraean Apollo, the scene of the crime thus becoming the scene of the punishment. Sophocles wrote a tragedy on the subject of Laocoon, but though a few fragments of the play have survived, its contents are unknown. See TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), pp. 211ff.; The Fragments of Sophocles, ed. A. C Pearson, vol. ii. pp. 38ff. In modern times the story of Laocoon is probably even better known from the wonderful group of statuary in the Vatican than from the verses of Virgil. That group, the work of three Rhodian sculptors, graced the palace of the emperor Titus in the time of Pliny, who declared that it was to be preferred to any other work either of sculpture or painting (Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxxvi.37). Lessing took the group for the text of his famous essay on the comparative limitations of poetry and art.)

And when night fell, and all were

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plunged in sleep, the Greeks drew near by sea from Tenedos, and Sinon kindled the beacon on the grave of Achilles to guide them.[*](The beacon-light kindled by the deserter and traitor Sinon to guide the Greeks across the water to the doomed city is a regular feature in the narratives of the taking of Troy; but the only other writer who mentions that it shone from the grave of Achilles is Tryphiodorus, who adds that all night long there blazed a light like the full moon above Helen's chamber, for she too was awake and signalling to the enemy, while all the town was plunged in darkness and silence; the sounds of revelry and music had died away, and not even the barking of a dog broke the stillness of the summer night. See Tryphiodorus, Excidium Ilii 487-521. That the poet conceived the fall of Troy to have happened in the summer time is shown by his describing how the Trojans wreathed the mane of the Wooden Horse with flowers culled on river banks, and how the women spread carpets of roses under its feet (Tryphiodorus, Excidium Ilii 316ff., 340-344). For these flowers of fancy Tryphiodorus is severely taken to task by the pedantic Tzetzes on the ground that Troy fell at midwinter; and he clinches the lesson administered to his predecessor by observing that he had learned from Orpheus, “who had it from another man,” never to tell a lie. Such was the state of the Higher Criticism at Byzantium in the twelfth century of our era. See Tzetzes, Posthomerica 700-707.) And Helen, going round the horse, called the chiefs, imitating the voices of each of their wives. But when Anticlus would have answered, Ulysses held fast his mouth.[*](This incident is derived from Hom. Od. 4.274-289. It is copied and told with fuller details by Tryphiodorus, who says that Anticlus expired under the iron grip of Ulysses (Tryphiodorus, Excidium Ilii 463-490).)

and when they thought that their foes were asleep, they opened the horse and came forth with their arms. The first, Echion, son of Portheus, was killed by leaping from it; but the rest let themselves down by a rope, and lighted on the walls, and having opened the gates they admitted their comrades who had landed from Tenedos.