Palladium (protective image)
A palladium or palladion is an image or other object of great antiquity on which the safety of a city or nation is said to depend. The word is a generalization from the name of the original Trojan Palladium, a wooden statue (xoanon) of Pallas Athena that Odysseus and Diomedes stole from the citadel of Troy. It was supposedly later taken to the future site of Rome by Aeneas, where it remained until perhaps transferred to Constantinople and was lost after the Empire converted to Christianity.
The Theotokos of Vladimir, tempera on panel, 104 x 69 cm, painted about 1130 in Constantinople, and protectress of Vladimir and later Moscow
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.)
10th-century icon of the Image of Edessa, with King Abgar V of the legend shown as Emperor Constantine VII who brought the image to Constantinople in 944
The Luck of Edenhall, 14th-century Islamic glass, a palladium for its English owners
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.)