Treachery by Gift

Louis H. Hamel, Jr., Esq. is a Massachusetts lawyer retired from the Boston firm of Wilmer Hale (formerly Hale and Dorr), where he long chaired Trusts & Estates and was active in Pensions, Exempt Organizations and Family Business practice. Earlier he taught Philosophy at Manhattanville College in Purchase NY and then managed a family industrial real estate business in Haverhill, Massachusetts. He has read Psychoanalytic materials for 40 years and has done other writings on Law and Psychoanalysis. He was a member of the Boston Psychoanalytic Allience until it ceased operations. He is a Fellow (Retired) of the American College of Trusts and Estates Counsel. We invite readers to respond with papers and letters to the editor to these fascinating pieces of legal and Psychoanalytic theory and practice.

When a gift in the form of a gigantic wooden horse is given, at the Athenian festival, by Greeks to Troy the Trojan priest of Poseidon, Laocoon, is suspicious. In fact, unknown to the suspicious Lacoon, Greek soldiers hide inside the beautiful horse (intending to get out at night and treacherously open the gates to the city).

In the succulently ambiguous Latin of Virgil, Laocoon says to his fellow Trojans, “Timeo Danaos et dona ferentis” (Aeneid II). The idiomatic English translation, “I fear Greeks who come bearing gifts,” does not do justice to the loose conjunction, “et,” by which “bearing gifts” does not gramatically modify “Greeks.” The warning could be read to apply not only to the Greeks, with whom Troy had unpredictable relations, but to anyone who comes bearing gifts. Suspicious Laocoon might have felt, “I fear anyone who comes bringing gifts.”

The very ancient sculpture (now in the Vatican Museums), “Laocoon,” is the image of agony. One version of the story behind the sculpture (much older than the Aeneid) is that Laocoon offended Athena (whom the Trojans were celebrating)