The frieze on the eastern end of the temple represents the culmination of the festival. The crowning act is about to be performed, and the solemnity becomes absolute. Figures at one end are balanced by corresponding figures at the other, all advancing toward a common point. First come slowly moving maidens, who are carrying the sacrificial utensils--their noble birth manifesting itself in their dignity of demeanor. The five maidens in the rear bear the ewers used in the libations; those forming the central group carry, in pairs, large objects resembling candlesticks, whose uses are not definitely known; while in the lead, on each side, are two maidens, bearing nothing in their hands--probably the Arrephorae, whose duties have been already performed. Both in costume and in coiffure these maidens represent what was characteristic of their age and sex in Athens during the supremacy of Pericles. Next comes a group of men, probably the magistrates appointed to await the arrival of the procession on the Acropolis. They border the seated divinities who have assembled to do honor to Athens at its greatest festival--seven figures on each side of the central slab, directly over the door of the temple, whereon is represented the climax of the solemn occasion,--the delivery of the new peplus to the priest or magistrate, whose office it was to receive it; while at his side stands the priestess of Athena, receiving from two attendants certain objects of unknown significance. Other pieces of sculpture on the Acropolis magnify the office of woman in the religious ceremonials in honor of the patron goddess. One of the porticoes of the Erectheum represents maidens of dignified mien and great beauty holding up the entablature with perfect ease and stately grace. These figures are usually called Caryatides, a name applied by the architect Vitruvius to designate figures of this kind; he ascribes its origin to the destruction of the town of Carya, in the Peloponnesus, by the Athenians, because it espoused the Persian side, the women of the town being sold into slavery; but surely the Athenians would not have so honored the disgraced women of a hostile city. Could they not portray, in marble, the Arrephoric maidens, and could not the basket-like burdens on their heads represent the burdens which they carried down from the Acropolis, and those which they received instead? The Athenians, indeed, called the figures merely _Korai_, or "the maidens."