καρυάτις

A caryatid is a sculpted female figure used as a column to support a building's entablature. The word comes from Greek Karyátides (Καρυάτιδες), meaning 'maidens of Karyai.' Karyai (modern Karyes) was a town in Laconia, in the southern Peloponnese, sacred to Artemis. According to the Roman architect Vitruvius, writing around 25 BCE, the women of Karyai were condemned to servitude after the town allied with the Persian invaders during the Greco-Persian Wars. Their punishment was architectural: to bear weight eternally in stone.

Vitruvius's story is almost certainly myth. Caryatid-like figures appear in Greek architecture before the Persian Wars, and the women of the Erechtheion—the most famous caryatids, carved around 421-406 BCE—do not look enslaved. They stand upright, dignified, wearing full-length peplos robes. Their posture suggests not punishment but participation. Modern scholars believe the figures represent the korai (maidens) who served in the cult of Artemis at Karyai.

The six caryatids of the Erechtheion on the Athenian Acropolis are the most recognized examples. Five remain in the Acropolis Museum (replaced by casts on the building). The sixth was removed by Lord Elgin in 1801 and sits in the British Museum in London—one of the most contested cultural artifacts in the world. Greece has demanded its return for over a century.

Caryatids reappeared in neoclassical architecture across Europe and America. The portico of St. Pancras New Church in London (1822) has caryatids. So does the Austrian Parliament Building in Vienna (1883). The Tribune Tower in Chicago (1925) has them too. Each deployment quotes the Erechtheion, whether the architect knew the Vitruvius story or not. The image of women holding up a building is older than its explanation.