in antiquity, a statue of the goddess Pallas. It was about three cubits high, and represented the goddess sitting and holding a pike in her right hand, and in her left a distaff and a spindle. It fell down from heaven near the tent of Ilus, as he was building the citadel of Ilium. Some, however, suppose, that it fell at Pessinus in Phrygia; or, according to others, Dardanus got it as a present from his mother Electra. There are some who maintain, that the palladium was made with the bones of Pelops by Abarris; but Apollodorus says, that it was no more than a piece of clock-work which moved of itself. However various the opinions of ancient authors be about this celebrated statue, it is universally allowed, that on its preservation depended the safety of Troy. This fatality the Greeks, during the Trojan war, were well aware of; and therefore Ulysses and Diomedes were commissioned to steal it. This they effected; and if we can rely upon the authority of some, they were directed how to carry it away by Helenus a son of Priam, who in this betrayed his country, because his brother Deiphobus, at the death of Paris, had married Helen, of whom he was enamoured. Minerva was enraged at the violence offered to her statue; and, according to Virgil, the palladium itself seemed to have received life and motion; and by the fishes which started from its eyes, and sudden springs from the earth, it seemed to show the resentment of the goddess. The true palladium, as is observed by some, was not carried away from Troy by the Greeks, but Palladius only a statue of similar size and shape, which was placed near it, to deceive whatever sacrilegious persons attempted to steal it. The palladium, therefore, as they maintain, Æneas conveyed safe from Troy to Italy, and it was afterwards preserved by the Romans with the greatest secrecy and veneration in the temple of Vesta; a circumstance which none but the vestal virgins knew. It was esteemed the destiny of Rome; and there were several others made perfectly like it, to secure it from being stolen, as was that at Troy, which the oracle of Apollo declared should never be taken so long as the palladium was found within its walls. A palladium was also placed by Nicias in the citadel of Athens.