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Updated: May 6, 2025
According to Pliny, it was the common opinion in his time, that the group was made of one stone by three sculptors, Agesander, Polydorus, and Athenadorus, all three natives of Rhodes, and the two last probably sons of the former. He says, "The Laocoön, which is in the palace of the Emperor Titus, is a work to be preferred to all others, either in painting or sculpture.
At this moment forty-two ships from Peloponnese, including some Siceliot and Italiot vessels from Locri and Tarentum, had been invited over by the Euboeans and were already riding off Las in Laconia preparing for the voyage to Euboea, under the command of Agesandridas, son of Agesander, a Spartan.
But Athens was not inclined either to revoke the decree, or to entertain their other proposals; she accused the Megarians of pushing their cultivation into the consecrated ground and the unenclosed land on the border, and of harbouring her runaway slaves. At last an embassy arrived with the Lacedaemonian ultimatum. The ambassadors were Ramphias, Melesippus, and Agesander.
Those great artists, Agesander, Polydorus, and Athenadorus, Rhodians, executed the principal figure, the sons, and the wonderful folds of the serpents, out of one piece of marble." Doubts exist respecting the era of this work.
This superb specimen of grecian sculpture, is supposed to be the united production of Polydorus, Athenodorus, and Agesander, but its great antiquity renders its history somewhat dubious.
The three Rhodian artists, AGESANDER, POLYDORUS, and ATHENOPORUS, mentioned by Pliny, as the sculptors of this chef d'oeuvre flourished during the time of the Emperors, in the first century of the Christian era. The group is composed of five blocks, but joined in so skilful a manner, that Pliny thought them of one single piece. The right arm of the father and two arms of the children are wanting.
This amazing groupe is the work of three Rhodian sculptors, called Agesander, Polydore, and Athenodorus, and was found in the thermae of Titus Vespasian, still supposing it to be the true antique. As for the torso, or mutilated trunk of a statue, which is called the school of Michael Angelo, I had not time to consider it attentively; nor taste enough to perceive its beauties at first sight.
He left many eminent scholars, among whom were Chares, who executed the famous Colossus of Rhodes, Agesander, Polydorus, and Athenodorus, who sculptured the group of the "Laocoon." The Rhodian School was the immediate offshoot from the school of Lysippus at Sicyon, and from this small island of Rhodes the Romans, when they conquered it, carried away three thousand statues.
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