Laocoön, Leadership and Wisdom

In a chapter titled “Laocoön, Leadership and Wisdom”, Robin Holt focuses on the figure of Laocoön, a Trojan priest, who, suspecting that Greek soldiers were hiding in the wooden horse left outside Troy, tried to warn his fellow citizens not to bring it into the city walls. But as he started to prod the sides with a spear the priest was dragged into the sea along with his two sons, by sea serpents who had been roused by the goddess Athena to silence him and maintain the ruse. Holt presents and interprets three different versions of this tale, the first from Virgil’s Aeneid, the second from Götfried Lessing’s interpretation of a classic sculpture depicting the story, and the third from William Blake’s verbal and visual montage. Through these different versions, Holt raises a series of questions about the persuasive force of cunning, evidential argument, aesthetic form, and contrary reasoning.