Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Ilus son of Tros, seeking a sign for a new city, followed a cow (or cow-and-oracle pattern akin to Cadmus) and founded Ilium—Troy in the plain—where the beast lay down. He prayed to Zeus for a confirming token; the Palladium fell from heaven before his tent (or into his unfinished shrine): a compact wooden image of armed Athena, three cubits tall in handbook measure, feet together, spear in one hand, distaff and spindle in the other. Ilus was struck blind for uncovering or mishandling the sacred thing; Athena herself (or sacrifice and prayer) later restored his sight when he propitiated the goddess. So long as the Palladium remained within Troy’s walls, the city was fated to be impregnable—a condition that drives the later Achaean theft by Odysseus and Diomedes (04/086). Ilus’s son Laomedon fortified and ruled; Priam would inherit after Heracles’s sack. Catalogue Ilus’s foundation and the heaven-fallen Palladium as the charter of sacred Ilios, distinct from Dardania on Ida and from the wartime theft.