Ancient Greek architecture of marriage; Athena, goddess of wisdom; Poseidon, god of the sea; Demeter, goddess of the harvest; Apollo, god of the sun, law, healing, plague, reason, music and poetry; Artemis, goddess of the moon, the hunt and the wilderness; Aphrodite, goddess of love; Ares, God of war; Hermes, god of commerce and travelers, Hephaestus, god of fire and metalwork, and Dionysus, god of wine and fruit-bearing plants. Worship, like many other activities, was done in community, in the open. However, by 600 BC, the gods were often represented by large statues and it was necessary to provide a building in which
Ancient Greek religion Ancient Greek religion Ancient Greek religion encompasses the collection of beliefs, rituals, and mythology originating in ancient Greece in the form of both popular public religion and cult practices. These groups varied enough for it to be possible to speak of Greek religions or "cults" in the plural, though most of them shared similarities. Most ancient Greeks recognized the twelve major Olympian gods and goddesses: (Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Athena, Ares, Aphrodite, Apollo, Artemis, Hephaestus, Hermes, and either Hestia or Dionysus), although philosophies such as Stoicism and some forms of Platonism used language that seems to assume a single transcendent