in Antiquity, a statue of the goddess Pallas, or Minerva. It was about three cubits high, and represented the goddess sitting, with a pike in her right hand, and in her left a distaff and a spindle. 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 the Greeks, during the Trojan war, were well aware of; and therefore Ulysses and Diomedes were commissioned to steal it. They effected their object; and if we may 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, on the death of Paris, had married Helen, of whom he was enamoured. Minerva was enraged at the violence offered to her statue. According to Virgil, the palladium itself seemed to have received life and motion; and by the flashes which darted from its eyes, and its sudden springs from the earth, it seemed to evince the resentment of the goddess. According to some, however, the true palladium was not carried away from Troy by the Greeks, but only a statue of similar size and shape, which was placed near it, to deceive any sacrilegious persons who might attempt to steal it. They maintain, therefore, that Æneas conveyed the palladium safely from Troy to Italy; and that 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 of. It was esteemed the destiny of Rome; and there were several others made perfectly like it, to secure it from being stolen, like that of Troy, which the oracle of Apollo declared would never be taken as long as the palladium was found within its walls. A palladium was also placed by Nicias in the citadel of Athens.