Laocoön
Λαοκόων
The Trojan priest who cried "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts."
He warned against bringing the wooden horse inside the walls, and hurled a spear into its flank.
At once two serpents rose from the sea and crushed him and his two sons — and the Trojans, reading it as the will of the gods, brought the horse in.
The sculpture of this scene, the Laocoön Group, was unearthed in Rome in 1506 and struck Michelangelo's generation like a thunderbolt.
SourcesVirgil, Aeneid