the athenians of the fifth century b.c., the builders of the temple at sounion, are often portrayed asuperheroes, the creators of democracy and a perfect society. we must be careful not to idealize them. like all societies, theirs was imperfect. it was based on slavery, women had no rights, they were imperialists, and in their darkest moments, as in the bitter peloponnesian war with sparta, the athenians fell prey to irrationality, mass hysteria, strange religious cults, pornography, urban violence, and murderous and unjust acts of foreign policy against smaller states-- things we're all too familiar with in the modern west. but greek artists and poets understood these things about human nature, and they made their art about those contradictions, about the tragedies and failures as well as the achievements. the sculptures of the altar of zeus from pergamum portray those contradictions in the dramatic manner of the second century b.c., but like so much greek art, the originals have been dismembered and fragmented, scattered around the museums of the world or buried deep and forgotten. s