Laocoon among the Gods,

Michael Squire explores how Greek and Roman materials can illuminate the thinking behind Lessing’s Laocoon. While Lessing’s project is structured around the interpretation of an ancient statue, the Laocoon’s conclusions about aesthetic media—not least, its implicit argument concerning the superiority of ‘ancient’ words over images—are predicated on a particular set of ‘modern’ ideas, themselves conditioned by a certain theological outlook. While purporting to talk about antiquity, Lessing re-imagines a Graeco-Roman ‘world full of gods’ in distinctly ‘Protestant’ terms.