CARYATIDES, n. In architecture, figures of women dressed in long robes, after the Asiatic manner, serving to support entablatures. The Athenians had been long at war with the Caryans; the latter being at length vanquished and their wives led captive, the Greeks, to perpetuate this event, erected trophies, in which figures of women, dressed in the Caryatic manner, were used to support entablatures. Other female figures were afterwards used in the same manner, but they were called by the same name.
They were called Caryatides, from Carya, a city in the Peloponnesus, which sided with the Persians, and on that account was sacked by the other Greeks, its males butchered, and its females reduced to slavery.
