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In ancient Greek religion, Artemis Caryatis Diana Caryatis, noted in Servius scholium on Virgil's Eclogue viii.30. (Καρυᾶτις) was an epithet of Artemis that was derived from the small polis of Caryae in Laconia.References to Karyai are collected in Graham Shipley, "'The other Lakedaimonians': the dependent Perioikic poleis of Laconia and Messenia" in M.H. Hanson, ed. The Polis as an Urban Centre and as a Political Community, (symposium) Copenhagen 1997:189-281. There, an archaic open-air temenos was dedicated to Carya, the Lady of the Nut-Tree, whose priestesses were called the caryatides, represented on the Athenian Acropolis as the marble supporting the porch of the Erechtheum. The late accountsVirgil, Eclogues 8.30 and Servius' commentary; Athenaeus 3.78b; Eustathius of Thessalonica, commentary on Homer, 1964.15, call noted in Pierre Grimal and A. R. Maxwell-Hyslop, The Dictionary of Classical Mythology, s.v. "Carya". made of the Carya a virgin who had been transformed into a nut-tree, whether for her unchastity (with Dionysus) or to prevent her rape.Sarah Iles Johnston, Restless Dead: Encounters between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece. (Berkeley: University of California Press), 1999:227. The particular form of veneration of Artemis at KaryaiThe feminine plural of the placename suggests an archaic "sisterhood of Karya"; see William Reginald Halliday, ed., The Greek Questions of Plutarch, 1928:181; Jennifer K. McArthur, Place-names in the Knossos Tablets: Identification and Location, 1993:26. suggests that in pre-classical ritual, Carya was the goddess of the nut treeCompare and the ash-tree nymphs called meliai. who was later assimilated into the Olympian goddess Artemis. Pausanias noted that every year, women performed a dance called the caryatis at a festival in honor of Artemis Caryatis called the Caryateia.The festival is attested by Hesychius, s.v. "Caryai".
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