Palladium (classical antiquity)
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 (xoanon) 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.
Nike (Victory) offers an egg to a snake entwined around a column surmounted by the Trojan Palladium. (Marble bas relief, Roman copy of the late 1st century AD. After a neo-Attic original of the Hellenistic era.)
Ajax the Lesser drags Cassandra from the Palladium. Detail from a Roman fresco in the atrium of the Casa del Menandro (I 10, 4) in Pompeii.
Diomedes with the Palladium approaches an altar
Odysseus and Diomedes steal the Palladium from Troy. (Apulian red-figure oinochoe of c. 360–350 BC from Reggio di Calabria.)
In the practice of religion, a cult image is a human-made object that is venerated or worshipped for the deity, spirit or daemon that it embodies or represents. In several traditions, including the ancient religions of Egypt, Greece and Rome, and modern Hinduism, cult images in a temple may undergo a daily routine of being washed, dressed, and having food left for them. Processions outside the temple on special feast days are often a feature. Religious images cover a wider range of all types of images made with a religious purpose, subject, or connection. In many contexts "cult image" specifically means the most important image in a temple, kept in an inner space, as opposed to what may be many other images decorating the temple.
One of the earliest known idols worshiped by humans. From Jericho, in modern-day Palestinian Territories. Pre-pottery Neolithic. Jordan Archaeological Museum, Amman, Jordan
6th-century stone murti of Shiva
Songye power figure
Reproduction of the Athena Parthenos statue at the original size in the Parthenon in Nashville, Tennessee