Caryatid

A caryatid (ˌkɛəɹiˈætɪd or ˌkæriˈætɪd or ; Καρυᾶτις, pl. Καρυάτιδες) is a sculpted female figure serving as an architectural support taking the place of a column or a pillar supporting an entablature on her head. The Greek term karyatides literally means "maidens of Karyai", an ancient town on the Peloponnese. Karyai had a temple dedicated to the goddess Artemis in her aspect of Artemis Karyatis: "As Karyatis she rejoiced in the dances of the nut-tree village of Karyai, those Karyatides, who in their ecstatic round-dance carried on their heads baskets of live reeds, as if they were dancing plants". An atlas or telamon is a male version of a caryatid, i.e. a sculpted male statue serving as an architectural support. The term is first recorded in the Latin form caryatides by the Roman architect Vitruvius. He stated in his 1st century BC work De architectura (I.1.5) that the female figures of the Erechtheion represented the punishment of the women of Caryae, a town near Sparta in Laconia, who were condemned to slavery after betraying Athens by siding with Persia in the Greco-Persian Wars. However, Vitruvius's explanation is doubtful; well before the Persian Wars, female figures were used as decorative supports in Greece and the ancient Near East. Vitruvius's explanation is dismissed as an error by Camille Paglia in and not even mentioned by Mary Lefkowitz in Black Athena Revisited. They both say the term refers to young women worshipping Artemis in Caryae through dance. Lefkowitz says that the term comes from the Spartan city of Caryae, where young women did a ring dance around an open-air statue of the goddess Artemis, locally identified with a walnut tree. Bernard Sergent specifies that the dancers came to the small town of Caryae from nearby Sparta. Nevertheless, the association of caryatids with slavery persists and is prevalent in Renaissance art. The ancient Caryae supposedly was one of the six adjacent villages that united to form the original township of Sparta, and the hometown of Menelaos' queen, Helen of Troy.