Palladium- Roman ArtifactArtifact"Pledge of Empire"

From Heaven to Troy

It fell from the sky onto the citadel of Troy: a small wooden figure of Pallas Athena, armed with spear and spindle. Dionysius of Halicarnassus records that while the Palladium stood in Troy, the city could not fall. For ten years the Greeks broke against its walls. They knew, eventually, that the statue had to go before the city could.

The Night It Left Troy

The Greeks told one version. Apollodorus records that Odysseus and Diomedes slipped into Troy by night, found the shrine, and carried the Palladium out through the dark. With it gone, Troy was defenseless. The horse came after.

Virgil told another. In the Aeneid, Aeneas carried the true Palladium from the burning city with his own hands. What Odysseus stole was a copy. The real image traveled with the Trojans to Italy, and when Aeneas's descendants built Rome, they placed it where no enemy could reach it.

In Vesta's Sanctuary

The Palladium rested in the penus Vestae, the innermost room of Vesta's temple, where only the Vestal Virgins and the Pontifex Maximus could enter. Ordinary Romans never saw it. They knew it was there the way they knew the foundations were under the floor.

In 241 BCE, fire reached the temple. Pliny records that the Pontifex Maximus Lucius Caecilius Metellus ran into the burning sanctuary and brought the sacred objects out. The flames took his eyesight. He lived, and the Palladium survived.

Romans counted it among the pignora imperii, the pledges of empire: sacred objects whose presence guaranteed Rome's power. When Constantine founded Constantinople, tradition held that he transferred the Palladium to his new capital. The old pledge moved east, and with it, supposedly, the empire's protection.