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 have great healing powers, and Lemnian earth (terra Lemnia) from the spot on which Hephaestus had fallen was believed to cure madness, the bites of snakes, and haemorrhage, and priests of Hephaestus knew how to cure wounds inflicted by snakes. He was represented in the temple of Athena Chalcioecus (Athena of the Bronze House) at Sparta, in the act of delivering his mother; on the chest of Cypselus, giving Achilles's armour to Thetis; and at Athens there was the famous statue of Hephaestus by Alcamenes, in which his lameness was only subtly portrayed. The Greeks frequently placed small dwarf-like statues