Laocöon, a priest of Apollo, in Troy, who having offended the god by, for one thing, advising the Trojans not to admit the wooden horse of the Greeks within the walls, was, with his two sons, while engaged in sacrificing to Poseidon, strangled to death in the coils of two enormous serpents sent to kill him, a subject which is the theme of one of the grandest relics of ancient sculpture now in existence and preserved in the Vatican.

LAOCOON, n. A famous piece of antique scripture representing a priest
of that name and his two sons in the folds of two enormous serpents.
The skill and diligence with which the old man and lads support the
serpents and keep them up to their work have been justly regarded as
one of the noblest artistic illustrations of the mastery of human
intelligence over brute inertia.