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The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 6 (of 6)

Note 2398 — BOOK XXXVI. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF STONES.

John Bostock translation

The name given in architecture to figures of females employed as columns in edifices. The Spartans, on taking the city of Carya, in Laconia, massacred the male inhabitants, and condemned the females to the most bitter servitude, as “hewers of wood and drawers of water.” Hence the memorials of their servitude thus perpetuated in architecture.

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