Clamores horrendos  

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This page Clamores horrendos is part of the medium specificity series.
Illustration: Laocoön and His Sons ("Clamores horrendos" detail), photo by Marie-Lan Nguyen.

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Clamores simul horrendos ad sidera tollit (he lifted to heaven horrendous cries) is a phrase from Virgil's account of the death of Laocoön in the Aeneid. The phrase is referenced by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in Laocoon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry and commented upon by Charles Bell in his Essays on the Anatomy of Expression in Painting.

In Aeneid Virgil describes the circumstances of Laocoön's death:

From the Aeneid

Ille simul manibus tendit divellere nodos

perfusus sanie vittas atroque veneno,

clamores simul horrendos ad sidera tollit:

qualis mugitus, fugit cum saucius aram

taurus et incertam excussit cervice securim.

Literal English translation:

At the same time he stretched forth to tear the knots with his hands

his fillets soaked with saliva and black venom

at the same time he lifted to heaven horrendous cries:

like the bellowing when a wounded bull has fled from the altar

and has shaken the ill-aimed axe from its neck.

John Dryden's translation:

With both his hands he labors at the knots;

His holy fillets the blue venom blots;

His roaring fills the flitting air around.

Thus, when an ox receives a glancing wound,

He breaks his bands, the fatal altar flies,

And with loud bellowings breaks the yielding skies.