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The people saw in this omen, Laocoön's punishment for his impiety in having pierced with his spear, the wooden horse which was consecrated to Minerva. Thus Virgil relates the story in the Æneid; others, as Hyginus, give different accounts, though agreeing in the main points.
He struggles to tear them away, but they overpower all his efforts and strangle him and the children in their poisonous folds. This event was regarded as a clear indication of the displeasure of the gods at Laocoon's irreverent treatment of the wooden horse, which they no longer hesitated to regard as a sacred object and prepared to introduce with due solemnity into the city.
The following lines are from the Childe Harold of Byron: "Now turning to the Vatican go see Laocoon's torture dignifying pain; A father's love and mortal's agony With as immortal's patience blending; vain The struggle!
The following lines are from the "Childe Harold" of Byron: "Now turning to the Vatican go see Laocoon's torture dignifying pain; A father's love and mortal's agony With an immortal's patience blending; vain The struggle! vain against the coiling strain And gripe and deepening of the dragon's grasp The old man's clinch; the long envenomed chain Rivets the living links; the enormous asp Enforces pang on pang and stifles gasp on gasp."
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