people of Skillos, one of the cities in Triphylia, who built the temple about eight years after Oxylos came to the throne of Elis. The style of the temple is Doric, and pillars stand all round it. In the rear chamber one of the two pillars is of oak. The length of the temple is one hundred and sixty-nine feet, the breadth sixty-three feet, the height not short of fifty feet. Who the architect was they do not relate. Columns A long-standing theory holds that the columns were only gradually replaced with stone ones due to the wood rotting out, and other natural and man-made events. In the second century AD, one of the two columns in the opisthodomos was still oak. As the replacements took place at widely differing periods between the Archaic and Roman periods, and were carved under the influence of their respective contemporary styles, they differ considerably in proportions and detail. This becomes apparent in the columns' capitals, as each one is slightly different from the next. Another theory holds that the columns are so different, not because wooden columns were being replaced, but because various workshops erected different stone columns at the same time. Perhaps each style represented the major city-states or private donors for whom these builders were working, as Olympia was a pan-Doric sanctuary. No remains of the entablature above the columns were found, but are believed to have been wooden. Walls and roof The walls had a bottom course of stone with a mudbrick superstructure, another feature typical of early Greek architecture. Other parts of the temple were made from limestone, unbaked bricks, and terracotta tiles. Holes in the protrusions at the ends of the walls—antae—indicate that a wooden cladding protected them from the elements. The temple had a Laconian-style roof; its pediments were decorated with disk acroteria of diameter, each made in one single piece (one is on display at the Archaeological Museum of Olympia). Contents The opisthodomos was also used to store numerous other objects, including many further statues of deities and votive offerings of Zeus and Hera. Among the few of these objects to survive was a statue of Hermes holding baby Dionysos, which is generally identified as the Hermes of Praxiteles, one of the most important preserved examples of Greek sculpture. Pausanias also witnessed a small ivory-clad couch (purportedly once belonging to Hippodameia), the bronze disc of Iphitus