Palladium (mythology)

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In Greek and Roman mythology, a palladium was an image of great antiquity on which the safety of a city was said to depend, especially the wooden one that Odysseus and Diomedes stole from the citadel of Troy and which was later taken to Rome by Aeneas. The Roman story was related in Virgil's Aeneid and other works.

The Trojan Palladium

Origins and theft

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.

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. Since Troy could not be captured while it safeguarded this image, the Greeks Diomedes and Odysseus made their way to the citadel in Troy by a secret passage and carried it off. In this way the Greeks were then able to enter Troy and lay it waste using the deceit of the Trojan Horse.

After Paris’ death, Helenus left the city but was captured by Odysseus. The Greeks somehow managed to persuade the seer/warrior to reveal the weakness of Troy. The Greeks learnt from Helenus, that Troy would not fall, while the Palladium, image or statue of Athena, remained within Troy's walls. The difficult task of stealing this sacred statue again fell upon the shoulders of Odysseus and Diomedes.

Odysseus, some say, went by night to Troy, and leaving Diomedes waiting, disguised himself and entered the city as a beggar. There he was recognized by Helen, who told him where the Palladium was. Diomedes then climbed the wall of Troy and entered the city. Together, the two friends killed several guards and one or more priests of Athena’s temple and stole the Palladium "with their bloodstained hands". Diomedes is generally regarded as the person who physically removed the Palladium and carried it away to the ships. There are several statues and many ancient drawings of him with the Palladium.

According to the ‘Epic-Cycle’ stories (Little Iliad), on the 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. (The incident was commemorated in 1842 by the French sculptor Pierre-Jules Cavelier (1814-94) in a muscle-bound plaster statue (see left); it depicts Diomedes alone, his noble face peering apprehensively over his right shoulder, as he cradles the Palladium). Because Odysseus was essential for the destruction of Troy, Diomedes refrained from punishing him.

Diomedes took the Palladium with him when he left Troy. According to some stories, he brought it to Italy. Some say that it was stolen from him on the way.

In Rome

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. It was kept there in the temple of Vesta in the Roman Forum.

In Late Antiquity, it was rumored that the Palladium was transferred from Rome to Constantinople by 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.

Palladium-equivalents in other cultures

Ancile, a Roman palladium
The Emerald Buddha, a palladium (ขวัญเมือง kwan meuang; colloquially มิ่งเมีอง ming meuang) of the Kingdom of Thailand. Every Thai city and town has a kwan or ming meuang (usually, but not necessarily, an image of Buddha).

References

Classical Mythology Published by Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

External links

Diomedes with the Palladium

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Last updated on Monday January 14, 2008 at 19:47:47 PST (GMT -0800)
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