The Groups designed for the North and South porticos, and for flanking the frontoon [sic] will be each fourteen feet long be ten feet high. 
At each corner of the building will be placed statues eleven fro twelve feet high, representing respectively “War,” “Peace,” and “Force”, and on the intervening pedestals between 
corners and centers will be placed and arranged six statues seven feet high – “Fame,” “Eloquence,” and “Verity” – and fourteen richly ornamented and figured vases from three and one-half to five and one-half feet high. All of these groups, statues, and vases are to be case in solid stone be the Pacific Stone Company…By the terms of the contracts the work is to be fully finished and in place before the adjournment of the next Legislature. The total cost of artist and mechanical work, materials and finishing, will be $34,500.
- Sacramento Daily Union, September 4 1872
These elements were removed during the Capitol's 1906 renovation and subsequently lost. Today only the statuary on the west front pediment tympanum (the recessed space enclosed by the triangular pediment) is original. These statues reflect the Capitol's roots in Greek architecture. In Grecian times, statuary was considered as part of the building not as mere decoration. It was a way to visually communicate and transmit epics and mythology in a largely illiterate society.