page_title: Palladium (classical antiquity)
section_title: Arrival at Rome
hierarchical_section_title: Palladium (classical antiquity) / The Trojan Palladium / Arrival at Rome
caption_attribution_description: English: Tondo with Athena and aegis. Roman mosaic from the 3rd century CE framed with a modern mosaic from the 18th century. From Tusculum. Français&#160;: Athéna à l'égide. Mosaïque romaine du IIIe siècle entourée d'un cadre du XVIIIe siècle. Pavement de la salle à croix grecque du musée Pio-Clementino.
context_page_description: In Greek and Roman mythology, the palladium or palladion was a cult image of great antiquity on which the safety of Troy and later Rome was said to depend, the wooden statue of Pallas Athena that Odysseus and Diomedes stole from the citadel of Troy and which was later taken to the future site of Rome by Aeneas. The Roman story is related in Virgil's Aeneid and other works. Rome possessed an object regarded as the actual Palladium for several centuries; it was in the care of the Vestal Virgins for nearly all this time.
  In English, since around 1600, the word palladium has been used figuratively to mean anything believed to provide protection or safety, and in particular in Christian contexts a sacred relic or icon believed to have a protective role in military contexts for a whole city, people or nation. Such beliefs first become prominent in the Eastern church in the period after the reign of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I, and later spread to the Western church. Palladia were carried in procession around the walls of besieged cities and sometimes carried into battle.
context_section_description: According to various versions of this legend the Trojan Palladium 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, 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.
caption: A 3rd-century Roman Pallas Athena mosaic from Tusculum, now in the Vatican Museums
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