Those who would fain see in the group an imitation of Virgil’s Laocoon will readily catch at what I have been saying, nor will they be displeased at another conjecture which just occurs to me. Why should not Asinius Pollio, they may think, have been the patron who had Virgil’s Laocoon put into marble by Greek artists? Pollio was a particular friend of the poet, survived him, and appears to have written an original work on the Æneid. For whence but from such a work could the various comments have been drawn which Servius quotes from that author?[179] Pollio was, moreover, a lover of art and a connoisseur, possessed a valuable collection of the best of the old masterpieces, ordered new works from the artists of his day, and showed in his choice a taste quite likely to be pleased by so daring a piece as the Laocoon,[180] “ut fuit acris vehementiæ, sic quoque spectari monumenta sua voluit.” Since, however, the cabinet of Pollio in Pliny’s day, when the Laocoon was standing in the palace of Titus, seems to have existed entire in a separate building, this supposition again loses something of its probability. Why might not Titus himself have done what we are trying to ascribe to Pollio? XXVII. A little item first brought to my notice by Winkelmann himself confirms me in my opinion that the sculptors of the Laocoon lived at the time of the emperors, or at least could not date from so early a period as he assigns them. It is this:[181] “In Nettuno, the ancient Antium, Cardinal Alexander Albani discovered in 1717 in a deep vault, which lay buried under the sea, a vase of the grayish black marble now called _bigio_, wherein the Laocoon was inlaid. Upon this vase is the following inscription:— ΑΘΑΝΟΔΩΡΟΣ ΑΓΗΣΑΝΔΡΟΥ ΡΟΔΙΟΣ ΕΠΟΙΗΣΕ. “Athanodorus of Rhodes, son of Agesander, made it.” We learn from this inscription that father and son worked on the Laocoon; and probably Apollodorus (Polydorus) was also a son of Agesander, for this Athanodorus can be no other than the one mentioned by Pliny. The inscription also proves that more than three works of art have been found—the number stated by Pliny—on which the artists have set the word “made,” in definite past time, ἐποίησε, _fecit_. Other artists, he says, from modesty, made use of indefinite time, “was making,” ἐποίει, _faciebat_. Few will contradict Winkelmann in his conclusion that the Athanodorus of this inscription can be no other than the Athenodorus whom Pliny mentions as among the sculptors of the Laocoon. Athanodorus and Athenodorus are entirely synonymous; for the Rhodians used the Doric dialect. But the other conclusions which he draws from the inscription require further comment.