tripods forming the corner and statues of Nike by Paeonios forming the ridge ones on the Temple of Zeus at Olympia. Columns For the sake of completeness, a further potential bearer of sculptural decoration should be mentioned here: the of the Ionic temples at Ephesos and Didyma. Here, already on the Archaic temples, the lower parts of the column shafts were decorated by protruding relief decorations, originally depicting rows of figures, replaced on their late Classical and Hellenistic successors with mythological scenes and battles. Function and design Cult statue and The functions of the temple mainly concentrated on the naos, the "dwelling" of the cult statue. The elaboration of the temple's external aspects served to stress the dignity of the . In contrast, the itself was often finished with some moderation, although by the Roman period some had clearly become rather cluttered with other statues, military trophies and other gifts. Often, the only source of light for and cult statue was the '''s frontal door, and oil lamps within. Thus, the interior only received a limited amount of light. Exceptions are found in the temples of Apollo at Bassae and of Athena at Tegea, where the southern wall had a door, potentially allowing more light into the interior. A special situation applies to the temples of the Cyclades, where the roof was usually of marble tiles. Marble roofs also covered the temple of Zeus at Olympia and the Parthenon at Athens. As marble is not entirely opaque, those may have been permeated with a distinctive diffused light. For cultic reasons, but also to use the light of the rising sun, virtually all Greek temples were oriented with the main door to the east. Another reason for the orientation of temples facing east is because of the west was seen as the entrance to the Underworld, such as seen in the Odyssey. Some exceptions existed, e.g. the west-facing temples of Artemis at Ephesos and at Magnesia on the Maeander, or the north–south oriented temples of Arcadia. Such exceptions are probably connected with cult practice. Study of the soils around temple sites, is evidence that temple sites were chosen with regard to particular deities: for example, amid arable soils for the agricultural deities Dionysos and Demeter, and near rocky soils for the hunter gatherer deities Apollo and Artemis. The cult image normally took the form of a statue of the deity, typically