Laocoon

Priest of Poseidon at Troy, Laocoön was killed along with his sons by Poseidon for trying to expose the ruse of the Trojan Horse.

The great sculpture of "Laocoön and his Sons" now in the Vatican museum was attributed by the Roman author [Pliny the Elder]? to three sculptors from the island of Rhodes: Hegesandros, Athenedoros, and Polydoros. The date - whether the sculpture is 2nd century B.C. or A.D. 1st century - is widely controverted in the field of classical art history. Pliny tells us that the sculpture was in the palace of the emperor Titus. When the fragments were discovered in the 16th century, Michelangelo was commissioned to restore the statue.