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 and which was supposedly later taken to the future site of
Rome by
Aeneas, where it remained until perhaps transferred to
Constantinople and lost sight of after the conversion of the Empire to Christianity.