The Laocoon Group is a story from the Hellenistic culture during the ancient Greek period of domination over the world. The story of the Laocoon Group is a common mythological story told from the ancient Greek world. Laocoon played a small role in the beginning of the Trojan War. He was the son of Capys, the brother of Anchises, and priest of Poseidon.
Laocoon was the person responsible for warning the Trojan’s about allowing the Trojan Horse within the walls of the city of Troy. He is then said to have thrown his spear at the horse. For his action a giant serpent is sent to kill him. It is said that the goddess Athena is the one responsible for sending the serpent to kill Laocoon and his two sons. At the end of the story the Trojan Horse is allowed into the city where Greeks hiding inside the Horse jump out and sack the entire city of Troy.The Greeks lived in a world dominated by myth and worship. They worshiped gods that represent phenomena that surrounded them in everyday life. These gods included: Zeus, King of the Gods, Hera, the Goddess of Marriage, and Poseidon, the God of the Sea, and Hades, God of the Underworld.
Each God or Goddess had his or her own place that they ruled with complete dominance. Often times these great powers clashed and war would break out on Earth. There was a symbol given to each of the Gods to help identify them. When all the Gods needed to meet, their meeting place was atop Mt. Olympus, near the city of Olympia. These Gods dominated the first part of Greek culture and began to fade as free human thought began to develop.The statue of Laocoon and his sons’ deaths has been created in two versions. First it was created in fine marble by the Greeks and later copied by the Romans in bronze. Marble is the term used for any type of rock that takes on a highly polished look. Bronze is a mixture of copper and tin that is highly prone to seawater corrosion. One possible explanation for the change from marble to copper is the availability of marble on the Greek mainland and on their surrounding islands. Marble wasn’t readily available to the Romans; therefore they switched to using Bronze to construct their sculptures.
Sculptures can conceal hidden meanings, messages, and themes. The statue of the Laocoon Group uses logos, pathos, and ethos to conceptualize the decision making of humans in times of war. The sculpture of the Laocoon Group expresses the growth of human artistic abilities by applying the strategies of logos, pathos, and ethos. Each of these traits is expressed in different aspects of the sculpture itself. These appeals directly affect how the art we see today was invented. From each of these strategies we can see how human artistic abilities and styles have been shaped from the beginning of artistry by logos, pathos, and ethos.
The rhetorical appeal to logos is applied in the sculpture through narration, classification and division, compare and contrast, and either/or. From these you can fully appreciate the sculpture in its entirety. The appeal by narration of the story is strictly dynamic. The story is constantly changing and sculpting the picture in our mind. This essentially shows us a certain point of time in which this sculpture is depicting. This gives us an extraction of the story of Laocoon. An extraction is an example of classification and division and aids the appeal to logos. The extraction is static unlike the story it doesn’t change and only tells us about a certain space in the story. The story and the extraction set up a binary of either/or. You can look at the sculpture and as dynamic, or looking at the whole story or you can look at it as static and only see the specific moment in the story that the sculpture is depicting. Finally, the last rhetorical appeal to logos used in this painting is compare and contrast. This is used in the mythological story of Laocoon and the realism of the sculpture itself. A mythological story is made up however the sculpture has a certain realism about it that makes you think that the artist had to be watching Laocoon and his son die to make such a life like sculpture. Logical appeal is all over in this sculpture whether it is obvious or hidden.
The sculpture also has a strong appeal to pathos. The static, extraction from the story of Laocoon shows emotions expressed on their faces make you feel a sense of compassion for them as you see them starting to draw their final breaths. There is also a sense of sympathy for Laocoon’s kids because their fate wasn’t decided by any choice they had made and they must watch their father die before they lose their lives as well. In this sculpture there is also the possibility of some sex appeal going on. None of the characters in the sculpture are wearing any clothes with the exception of a leaf covering their genitals. However I don’t think that this was the original intent of the sculptor it is a possible use of pathos. In the sculpture I believe the artist also tried to incorporate the scare tactic by showing that if you enrage the gods you will pay with your life. These pathetic structures are used to make the viewer feel for those that are suffering in the sculpture.
Ethos is also at work among the other elements of this sculpture. In this sculpture ethos has been used to show what happens to traitors. Laocoon was a traitor to the soldiers of Greece and the Athenian Goddess Athena.
He crossed them and paid with the ultimate price…his life. In ancient Greece this sculpture of the story of Laocoon would’ve been similar to seeing a famous face on your television set. Every child, teen, and adult knew the story of Laocoon and his family and what they had done to earn the fate. In those days the story of Laocoon was as famous as any sport’s athlete in America. The element of ethos is hidden somewhat from the common viewer. However if we examine the credibility of the sculpture we will see that Laocoon damaged his credibility by giving out the information that he knew. The dynamic, story and the static, sculpture itself show misuse of ethos by the use of ad hominem. They attack Laocoon’s actions rather than attack the Greeks for planning a sneak attack on the Trojans. You must have a little bit of background information to pick out these subtleties in this sculpture.From each of the three strategies above; logos, pathos, and ethos, it is evident that human decision making during times of war can lead to undesired outcomes, as is the case for Laocoon and his two sons. They meet a very unpleasant end for the decision that Laocoon made.
Betraying those that raised you is never a good idea. Traitorous deeds have awful consequences that no one wants to consider because they never think that they will ever be caught. From the sculpture depicting the end of Laocoon’s life we can see how far artistry has come from the stiff, blocky sculptures of the Egyptians and Mesopotamians. T.I.
