Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The sacred shield of Mars, said to have fallen from heaven in the reign of Numa, and declared by the diviners to be the palladium of Rome so long as it should be kept in the city.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Rom. Antiq.) The sacred shield of the Romans, said to have-fallen from heaven in the reign of Numa. It was the palladium of Rome.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun historical The sacred shield of the Ancient Romans, said to have fallen from heaven in the reign of Numa. It was the palladium of Rome.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Latin

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Examples

  • The 'ancile' or sacred shield of Numa hung lustrous in the air over this very city, till that pious prince took it down and hung it in the temple of Jupiter.

    The Cloister and the Hearth Charles Reade 1849

  • It is a sophisma pigrum, and (as Bacon hath said) the arrogance of pusillanimity, which lifts up the idol of a mortal's fancy and commands us to fall down and worship it, as a work of divine wisdom, an ancile or palladium fallen from heaven.

    Biographia Literaria Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1803

  • "Miserable men," he says elsewhere, "you refuse to worship the ancile, yet you worship the wood of the cross, and sign it on your foreheads, and fix it on your doors.

    The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 Rossiter Johnson 1906

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