Gaius Maecenas
The findspot was inside and very close to the Servian Wall, which was still maintained in the 1st century AD (possibly converted to an aqueduct), though no longer the city boundary, as building had spread well beyond it. The spot was within the Gardens of Maecenas, founded by Gaius Maecenas the ally of Augustus and patron of the arts. He bequeathed the gardens to Augustus in 8 BC, and Tiberius lived there after he returned to Rome as heir to Augustus in 2 AD. Pliny said the "Laocoön" was in his time at the palace of Titus ("qui est in Titi imperatoris domo"), then heir to his father Vespasian, but the location of Titus's residence remains unknown; the imperial estate of the Gardens of Maecenas may be a plausible candidate. If the "Laocoön" group was already in the location of the later findspot by the time Pliny saw it, it might have arrived there under Maecenas or any of the emperors. The extent of the grounds of Nero's Domus Aurea is now unclear, but they do not appear to have extended so far north or east, though the newly rediscovered findspot-location is not very far beyond them.