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
Hephaestus are the oldest of all his representations. Hephaestus was sometimes portrayed as a vigorous man with a beard and was characterized by his hammer or some other crafting tool, his oval cap, and the chiton. Hephaestus is described in mythological sources as "lame" (), and "halting" (). He was depicted with crippled feet and as misshapen, either from birth or as a result of his fall from Olympus. In vase paintings, Hephaestus is usually shown lame and bent over his anvil, hard at work on a metal creation, and sometimes with his feet back-to-front: "Hephaistos amphigyēeis". He walked with the