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Palladium
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
Description
Pallas's statue, Troy to the Vestals
The Palladium is a small wooden image of Pallas/Athena, fallen from the sky or made by the goddess, that keeps a city safe while it stays inside. Greek sack-of-Troy tradition and Apollodorus: Odysseus and Diomedes steal it; other lines give it to Aeneas. Virgil's Aeneid makes Aeneas the carrier toward Italy. Roman antiquarians lodged it with the Vestals. Several cities claimed the true image. It is a talisman-statue in epic and Roman state myth, not a datable wooden find from Hisarlik.
Primary Sources
“The fates declared that Troy could not be taken so long as the Palladium remained within the walls; Diomedes and Odysseus carried it off.”
“Aeneas bore the household gods and the sacred image from the burning city toward the land that would be Rome.”
Powers & Abilities
City ProtectionDivine FavorInvincibility BlessingSacred Authority