Palladium

These artefacts are the depictions of the deity that serves as the spiritual and political palladium of the nation.

"But when Ulysses, fain / to weave new crimes, with Tydeus' impious son / dragged the Palladium from her sacred fane, / and, on the citadel the warders slain, / upon the virgin's image dared to lay / red hands of slaughter, and her wreaths profane, / hope ebbed and failed them from that fatal day, / the Danaans' strength grew weak, the goddess turned away. / No dubious signs Tritonia's wrath declared."

"By his words made wise / this steed, for stol'n Palladium, they devise, / to soothe the outrag'd goddess."

"Tall and great, / with huge oak-timbers mounting to the skies, / they build the monster, lest it pass the gate, / and like Palladium stand, the bulwark of the State."

Palladium is a transition metal with element symbol Pd and atomic number 46.

Paul needed the palladium for his invention.

The trial by jury is the Palladium of our civil rights.

[H]ow unspeakably ominous to dim Royalist participators; for whom Royalism was Mankind's palladium[.]

The presupposition of the Prometheus myth is to be found in the extravagant value which a naive humanity attached to fire as the true palladium of every ascending culture.