1 Minnesota Jones: The Palladium of Troy, eh? Do you have a lead on it?
1 Sallah: Palladium?
2 Monty: A statue of Pallas carved by the Greek goddess Athena after Pallas died in a tragic accident while they were playing. She gave it to Zeus.
3 Monty: He later discarded it; it fell to Earth at the feet of Ilus as he was praying for a sign of prosperity for his newly founded city: Ilium, now known as Troy.
4 Sallah: {shaking head} Those wacky Greek gods...
4 Prof. Jones: Yes, a sign saying "Ignore the horse" would have been more use.

Sallah is useful as a character to explain things to so that I can reveal important information pertaining to the plot without having to simply lump it all down here in the annotations.

If you want to read more:

• Palladium.
• Pallas.
• Athena.
• Zeus.
• Ilus.
• Troy.
• Palladium, the chemical element, which has nothing to do with our story, and is only mentioned here because I know I'll get a dozen e-mails from people about it if I don't.

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2016-07-04 Rerun commentary: Zeus is responsible for so much stuff in Greek mythology. At least this time it wasn't because he couldn't keep it in his pants.

Unless he dropped the Palladium because he was too busy concentrating on turning into an ocelot or a shower of gold or something equally ridiculous and seducing some nymph or other.

Yeah, actually, that's probably exactly how it happened.