drags
Cassandra from the Palladium. Detail from a Roman fresco in the atrium of the
Casa del Menandro (I 10, 4) in Pompeii.
Origins The Trojan Palladium was said to be a wooden image of
Pallas (whom the
Greeks identified with
Athena and the
Romans with Minerva) and to have fallen from heaven in answer to the prayer of
Ilus, the founder of
Troy. "The most ancient talismanic
effigies of Athena",
Ruck and
Staples report, "were magical found objects, faceless pillars of Earth in the old manner, before the Goddess was
anthropomorphized and given form through the intervention of human intellectual meddling."
Arrival at Troy The arrival at Troy of the Palladium, fashioned by Athena in remorse for the death of Pallas, as part of the city's
founding myth, was variously referred to by Greeks, from the seventh century BC onwards. The Palladium was linked to the
Samothrace mysteries through the pre-Olympian figure of
Elektra, mother of
Dardanus, progenitor of the Trojan royal line, and of
Iasion, founder of the Samothrace mysteries. Whether Elektra had come to Athena's shrine of the Palladium as a pregnant suppliant and a god cast it into the territory of Ilium, because it had been profaned by the hands of a woman who was not a virgin, or whether Elektra carried it herself or whether it was given directly to Dardanus vary in sources and
scholia. In Ilion, King
Ilus was blinded for touching the image to preserve it from a burning temple.
Theft with the Palladium approaches an altar During the
Trojan War, the importance of the Palladium to Troy was said to have been revealed to the Greeks by
Helenus, the prophetic son of
Priam. After
Paris' death, Helenus left the city but was captured by Odysseus. The Greeks somehow managed to persuade the warrior seer to reveal the weakness of Troy: the city would not fall while the Palladium remained within its walls. The perilous task of stealing this sacred statue again fell upon the shoulders of Odysseus and
Diomedes. The two stole into the
citadel in Troy by a
secret passage and carried it off, leaving the desecrated city open to the deceit of the
Trojan Horse. n red-figure
oinochoe of c. 360–350 BC from
Reggio di Calabria.) Odysseus, according to the
epitome of the
Little Iliad (one of the books of the
Epic Cycle) preserved in
Proclus's Chrestomathia, went by night to Troy disguised as a beggar. There he was recognized by
Helen, who told him where to find the Palladium. After some stealthy killing, he went back to the ships. He and Diomedes then re-entered the city and stole the sacred statue. Diomedes is sometimes depicted as the one carrying the Palladium to the ships. There are several statues and many ancient drawings of him with the Palladium. According to the
Narratives of the
Augustan period mythographer
Conon as summarised by
Photius, while the two heroes were on their way to the ships, Odysseus plotted to kill Diomedes and claim the Palladium (or perhaps the credit for gaining it) for himself. He raised his sword to stab Diomedes in the back. Diomedes was alerted to the danger by glimpsing the gleam of the sword in the moonlight. He disarmed Odysseus, tied his hands, and drove him along in front, beating his back with the flat of his sword. From this action was said to have arisen the Greek proverbial expression "Diomedes' necessity", applied to those who act under compulsion. Because Odysseus was essential for the destruction of Troy, Diomedes refrained from injuring him. Diomedes took the Palladium with him when he left Troy. According to some stories, he brought it to Italy; others say that it was stolen from him on the way.
Arrival at Rome According to various versions of this legend the Trojan Palladium found its way to
Athens,
Argos,
Sparta (all in
Greece) or
Rome in
Italy. To this last city it was either brought by Aeneas, the exiled Trojan (Diomedes, in this version, having only succeeded in stealing an imitation of the statue) or surrendered by Diomedes himself. An actual object regarded as the Palladium was undoubtedly kept in the
Temple of Vesta in the
Roman Forum for several centuries. It was regarded as one of the
pignora imperii, sacred tokens or pledges of Roman rule
(imperium).
Pliny the Elder said that
Lucius Caecilius Metellus had been blinded by fire when he rescued the Palladium from the
Temple of Vesta in 241 BC, an episode alluded to in
Ovid and
Valerius Maximus. When the controversial emperor
Elagabalus (reigned 218–222 AD) transferred the most sacred relics of Roman religion from their respective shrines to the
Elagabalium, the Palladium was among them. In
Late Antiquity, it was rumored that the Palladium was transferred from Rome to
Constantinople by
Constantine the Great 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 and his new capital. ==The Athenian Palladium==