The Seba library treats Palladion in 7 passages, across 3 authors (including Harrison, Jane Ellen, Burkert, Walter, Arthur W.H. Adkins).
it is not the goddess Pallas Athena who lends sanctity to the Palladion, it is the sanctity of the Palladion that begets the godhead of Pallas Athena.
Harrison advances the provocative thesis that the Palladion’s inherent mana is ontologically prior to and generative of the goddess Athena herself, inverting the standard anthropomorphic assumption.
, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912thesis
the Palladion which was the slayer became the Saviour, the Shield. In the well-known fresco from Mycenae we see the Shield, half humanized, as the object of an actual cult.
Harrison locates the Palladion within the archaic logic that the weapon capable of killing is also capable of saving, evidenced by Mycenaean material culture showing the Shield as an object of direct cultic veneration.
, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912thesis
Why is the shield sacred? The prompt answer will probably be returned, ‘because it is the shield of a god’—perhaps of the sky-god. We have the usual a priori anthropomorphism.
Harrison interrogates and rejects the reflexive anthropomorphic explanation for the shield’s sacredness, preparing the ground for her mana-first argument about the Palladion.
, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912supporting
The Bouzygai provide the priest of Zeus at the Palladion.
Burkert situates the Palladion within Attic priestly genealogy, showing that the Bouzygai clan held hereditary sacral office at the sanctuary, linking the object to Athenian civic and sacrificial institutions.
, Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical, 1977supporting
a Palladion in particular was a possession to be cherished greatly, even though it was never a pledge of divine nearness as in Rome. There are no magical rites to give life to the cult image as in Babylon.
Burkert distinguishes the Greek Palladion from analogous objects in Rome and Babylon, arguing it was venerated as a precious civic possession without the animating rites or intimate divine-presence theology found elsewhere.
, Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical, 1977supporting
the man who wins his case at the Palladion must affirm with the most solemn formalities that those jurors who have voted on his side have voted what is true and right.
Adkins records the Palladion as the site of an Athenian law court in which the victor was required to take a specially solemn oath, demonstrating how the object’s sacral authority extended into the juridical sphere.
, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960supporting
‘Buzyge und Palladion,’ ZRGG 22 (1970) 356-68
Burkert’s bibliographic self-citation flags his dedicated scholarly treatment of the Bouzygai-Palladion connection as a separate published study, signalling the topic’s independent importance within his research program.
, Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical, 1977aside