Roman Pantheonother
Palladium
- City Protection
- Divine Favor
- Invincibility Blessing
- Sacred Authority
A sacred wooden statue of Minerva that fell from the heavens and guaranteed the safety of the city that possessed it. As long as Rome held the Palladium, the city could never fall to its enemies.
About Palladium
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.
Origin
According to legend, the statue fell from the sky and was first kept in Troy. Aeneas rescued it during Troy's fall and brought it to Italy, where it became Rome's most sacred treasure.
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- Apollodorus, Library / Epitome (Palladium)
- Virgil, Aeneid 2
About this entry
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.
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