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Palladium (mythology)
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Image:PallasGiustiniani.jpg thumbnail|200px|right|A Roman copy of a Greek statue of Pallas.
In
Greek mythology Greek and
Roman mythology, a '''palladium''' was an image of immemorial antiquity on which the safety of a city was said to depend, especially the one that
Odysseus and
Diomedes stole from the
citadel of
Troy. It features in Graeco-Roman works such as the
Aeneid. "Palladium" also refers to the specific statue that
Athena erected of
Pallas, daughter of
Triton (mythology) Triton.
The Trojan Palladium was said to be the image of
Pallas, whom the
Ancient Greece Greeks identified with
Athena and the
Ancient Rome Romans with Minerva, and to have fallen from heaven in answer to the prayer of
Ilus, the founder of
Troy. Since Troy could not be captured while it contained this image, the Greeks
Diomedes and
Odysseus carried it off during the
Trojan War. According to various versions of this legend it found its way to
Athens, or
Argos, or
Sparta (all in
Greece), or
Rome in
Italy. To this last city it was either brought by
Aeneas the exiled Trojan (Diomedes having only succeeded in stealing an imitation of the statue) or surrendered by Diomedes himself. It was kept there in the temple of
Vesta in the
Roman Forum.
According to myth, the importance of the Palladium to Troy was revealed to the Greeks by
Helenus, the prophetic son of
Priam, and Diomedes and Odysseus made their way to the
citadel in Troy by a
secret passage and took the image. In this way the Greeks were then able to enter Troy and lay it waste using the deceit of the
Trojan Horse.
"The most ancient talismanic effigies of Athena,"
Carl Ruck Ruck and
Danny Staples Staples report (see ''References'' below), "...were magical found objects, faceless pillars of Earth in the old manner, before the
Triple Goddess Goddess was anthropomorphized and given form through the intervention of human intellectual meddling."
In
Late Antiquity, it was rumored that the Palladium was transferred from Rome to
Constantinople by
Constantine I of the Roman Empire Constantine and buried under the
Column of Constantine in his forum. Such a move would have undermined the primacy of Rome, and was naturally seen as a move by Constantine to legitimize his reign.
See also
*
Pallas
*
Aeneid
*
Ancile, a Roman palladium
References
*Carl Ruck and Danny Staples, ''The World of Classical Myth''
Category:Greek mythology
Category:Roman mythology
fr:Palladium (mythologie)
it:Palladio (mitologia)
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