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adventurers without employment; and those who did not find a settlement in Megara were, for the most part, willing to share the fortunes of Althæmenes." It is said that he was invited on the one hand by the lonians, who were on the point of migrating to Asia; and on the other by Pollis and his Spartan followers, to unite his forces with theirs. But he rejected both proposals, that he might pursue the course marked out for him by an oracle, which had enjoined him to seek the land which should be granted to his prayers by Jupiter and by the Sun. Rhodes was the island of the Sun; the god of day had given it to his children when it first rose out of the waters: but Crete was the birthplace of Jupiter, and Althæmenes, to com

generation, and, in consequence, to have migrated anew from Laconia to Crete, accompanied, however, by some Spartans, and under the command of two chiefs named Pollis and Delphus. * In their passage they left a portion of their body in the Isle of Melos, which dated its unfortunate connexion with Sparta from this epoch. The rest occupied Gortyna (an inland town, but on the south side of the island) without any resistance from the Cretans of the surrounding district, who became their subjects. Another relation of the same events gives a somewhat fuller account of the issue of the expedition, but introduces different actors. The Lacedæmonians, Pollis, and his brother Crataidas, are here named as the chiefs; but the people whom they lead from Amycle are not Min-ply with the oracle, while he himself bent his yans, but their enemies and conquerors, the Pelasgians. They are said to have defeated the natives in several battles, and to have made themselves masters of Lyctus (an inland town, not very far from Gortyna), and of other cities.† The substitution of the Pelasgians for the Minyans in this form of the narrative may, perhaps, be safely considered as an error, arising from a confusion of the stories told of them by Herodotus, though it is said that the legend in this shape was so current at Lyctus itself, that the Lyetians held themselves to be kinsmen of the Athenians by the side of their mothers, because the Pelasgians had carried off Athenian women to Lemnos. A greater difficulty may, at first sight, seem to arise from the part which the Spartans are described as taking in the enter--to Agamemnon, when, on his return from prise of the Minyans, with whom, according to all accounts, their intercourse was by no means friendly, at least during the latter part of the sojourn which these strangers made in Laconia. If it were necessary to resort to conjecture for an explanation of the fact, we might, perhaps probably enough, suppose the occasion to have arisen from that state of disorder and discord which all writers represent to have prevailed at Sparta for many generations after the conquest, and which seems, likewise, to have given rise to the expedition of Theras. The ruling Spartans were undoubtedly no less willing to rid themselves of the restless and ambitious spirits among their own citizens than of their enemies, whether Minyans or Achæans, who were desirous of migrating to foreign lands. Hence such an expedition, though the bands which embarked in it were chiefly composed of strangers, might be made under the sanction of Sparta; and the colonies which it planted would regard her as their parent, and be open to all the influence of the Dorian character and institutions.

The history of the other expedition, though not fuller, is less perplexed by contradictory statements. The domestic feuds which agitated the family of Temenus are said to have continued in the third generation. Althæmenes, the youngest son of Ceisus, at variance with his brothers, resolved on seeking a new home. It was at the time when the failure of the enterprise of the Dorians against Attica left many

* Conon, 36. The name of Delphus seems to have arisen out of an error of the transcribers (for accλpòs), if it is not a personification, which often occurs, of the oracle which directed the enterprise.

+ Plut, de Mul. Virt., Tupp vides.

course to Rhodes, left a part of his followers in Crete. Their conquests must have been considerable, for Ephorus spoke of Althæmenes as if he had been the sole founder of a Dorian colony in Crete. Yet we are not distinctly informed in what part of the island they established themselves. It may, however, be conjectured, from some traditions which cannot be more simply explained on any other supposition, that as the principal settlements of the Laconian adventurers lay towards the southeast, so those of the Argives were planted on the western side of the island. A legend, which it is scarcely possible to accept in its literal sense, referred the origin of several Cretan towns-among the rest, of one named Mycenæ Troy, he was forced by a tempest to land in Crete. If we might suppose that this legend sprang out of the colonies of Althæmenes, it would direct us to the neighbourhood of the ancient town of Cydonia, as the quarter in which they were planted; and there are traces which seem to mark that Cydonia itself had received a part of its population from Argos. Polyrrhenia, on the western coast, near which Agamemnon was said to have raised an altar, was first fortified by Achæan and Laconian colonists. As we here find Laconians in the west, it seems not improbable that the town of Phæstus, in the eastern quarter of the island, may have been founded by the people of Althæmenes, though it lay in the neighbourhood of Gortyne, and though the Heracleid Phæstus, from whom its name was derived, was subsequently believed to have passed over from Sicyon to Crete before the Dorian conquest of Peloponnesus.||

The scantiness of these accounts, which is not surprising when we consider the period to which they relate, is no reason for questioning the importance of the Peloponnesian colonies in Crete. The numbers, indeed, of the Dorians who took part in them, appears to have been very small, compared with the extent of the island; and their whole force was probably slender. But the state in which they found the country seems to have favoured their underta

* Conon, 47; Eustath. on 11., p. 313, where Alth is said to have been driven out of Argos. It is nowhere distinctly stated that he shared the expedition against Attica, though this has sometimes been inferred from the words of Strabo, XIV., p. 653. † Vell Paterc, 1., I.

There was, it seems, a Hyllean tribe both at Argos and Cydonia (Steph. Byz. and Hesych). This, however, strictly proves nothing more than that Cydonia had received some Dorian inhabitants. Strabo, x., p. 479. Paus., ., 5, 7, and Steph. Byz., Daioros.

however, this is rejected, the question which divided the ancients as to the relative antiquity of the Cretan and the Spartan systems falls to the ground of itself, as will be more clearly seen when we come to consider the legislation of Lycurgus.

The institutions which we shall shortly have to describe under that head are so similar to those of Crete, that it will be sufficient here to give a brief outline of the latter. The inhabitants were divided into three ranks, slaves, free

king, and to have enabled them first to gain a firm footing, and then to make a steady progress The Iliad describes Crete as containing a hundred cities;* but the Odyssey reduces that number to ninety; and some of the ancients endeavoured to explain the difference by supposing that ten cities had been lost through intestine feuds after the Trojan war: others believed that ten new ones had been founded between that event and the poet's time, and Ephorus named Althæmenes as the founder. This is, no doubt, an arbitrary fiction; but a Cre-men, and an intermediate class, removed at a tan tradition, apparently quite unconnected with these attempts at reconciling the two Homeric poems, spoke of the whole island having been wasted by plague and famine after the Trojan war, and having been left almost desolate, till its population was replenished by the new race which finally retained possession of it. One point, at least, appears to be indisputably proved by the condition in which Crete is exhibited to us by the earliest accounts of its subsequent history that the Dorian settlers found it divided among a number of independent states, kept asunder by the difference of their origin, and, perhaps, by mutual animosity, and separately unable to resist the invaders. Yet here, still more than in Peloponnesus, the conquest must have been gradual, and it must have been long before the Dorians had spread over the whole island, if no part of it was before inhabited by a kindred race. With respect to this question, it is remarkable that none of the traditions preserved to us concerning the Argive and Laconian colonies make any mention of Cnossus, the ancient seat of Minos; or of any Dorians previously settled in the island. The renown of Cnossus was transferred to Gortyna and Lyctus, and it was in the latter city that Lycurgus was believed to have studied the institutions which he transplanted to Sparta. Those of the ancients who contended that the Cretan institutions were derived from Sparta, built their chief argument on the fact that Lyctus was her colony, and, therefore, might naturally borrow from the mother city. On the other hand, those who believed that the Spartan lawgiver had copied the model which he found at Lyctus, still held Minos to have been its original author. We have already observed that this opinion might easily have arisen out of the ambition of the Cretan Dorians to appropriate the fame of Minos to themselves, and to hallow their own usages by his revered name. But it may also not have been entirely destitute of a real foundation, and may only have been erro-ute, and those which were occupied by the citneous in extending to the whole system what was true of no more than a few of its parts, in which vestiges might undoubtedly be preserved of a more ancient polity. But, that the social fabric, which struck the ancients by its close resemblance to that of Sparta, and which they concluded must have been either its archetype or its copy, was already standing in Crete in the period of Minos, is an opinion which requires much stronger evidence to support it. When,

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nearly equal distance from the degradation of
the one and the privileges of the other. This
class was undoubtedly composed chiefly of the
old possessors of the land, who had submitted
without a struggle to the superior force of the
conquerors. The name by which they were
distinguished marked their condition-that of a
rural population dwelling in open towns or vil-
lages*-in contrast with the citizens, who resi-
ded in the capital of each territory. Their
lands were subjected to a peculiar tax or trib-
ute, from which those of the upper class were
exempt, but their persons were free and their
industry unrestricted, an advantage which went
far to counterbalance all the burdens imposed
upon them, and even the privileges from which
they were excluded. These were not only the
proper functions of the citizen, those connected
with the enactment of laws, the administration
of justice, and the government of the state, but
also the use of arms, such as the citizen reserv-
ed for himself, and the exercises by which he
was trained to them in the public schools.‡
The bow appears to have been the ordinary
weapon of this class, which in all ages supplied
the Grecian armies with their best archers..
They were allowed to retain such of their an-
cient national usages as did not interfere with
their dependance on their conquerors; and, on
the whole, there is no reason to think that their
condition was oppressive. The slaves, with
respect to the origin of their servitude, may be
probably divided into two classes, one consist-
ing of those who were already such at the time
of the conquest, the other of freemen taken
with arms in their hands, who purchased their
lives by the sacrifice of their liberty.
spect to their situation, such as it continued in
after times, they were distinguished by peculiar
names, which expressed the relations in which
they stood either to individuals or to the state.
Besides the lands which were left in the pos-
session of their ancient owners, subject to trib-

With re

izens, each state appears to have reserved a domain for itself, which it cultivated by the hands of public slaves, who constituted a separate body, called a mnoa, and who, probably, likewise performed various services of a public nature within the city. Those who tilled the portions of ground allotted to the individual freemen were designated by a different title, de

* Περίοικοι.

† Its amount is uncertain, unless it was the stater, which the slaves, as they are, perhaps, imperly called, had to pay towards the public meals. Dosiades in Au P. 113. Anst, l'ol., ., 5 Aristotle, indeed. is here speaking of the slaves (doubts), but he manifestly uses this as a general term to describe all who were not citizens.

Ο μιῶν, μνοία, μνωνα, οι Μινωία σύνοδος, as it is called by Strabo, xi.. p. 542. The name, however, is more prubably connected with the word dus than with Minos.

rived from their peculiar condition.* Slaves number; the first in rank, the protocosmus, gave of this and the former class might be sold, but not to be carried out of the country. A third class, which was probably by far the least numerous, and exclusively employed in menial labours, was purchased, as their name imported, from abroad. It might therefore appear that these ought to be discriminated from the former classes, as slaves from serfs. The ancient authors, however, place them all on the same footing, and do not indicate any difference in the manner of treating them, unless it be by the custom which prevailed at Cydonia, and perhaps in other cities, where the serfs enjoyed certain holydays, during which we are told that they were left in possession of the town, and might even drive out their masters, if they would not wait at their table, with the whip, a perhaps exaggerated description of the Cretan Saturnalia.‡

his name to the year. This title seems to have been chosen with reference to the most important of their functions, that of commanding in war. They also represented the state in its intercourse with foreigners, and held or conducted all deliberations relating to its general interests. They were elected by the whole body of the citizens, but out of a certain number of privileged houses or families; Aristotle s censure implies that, in his day at least, little attention was paid to any qualities of intrinsic worth. They held their office for a year, at the end of which those who had approved themselves worthy of their station might aspire to fill up the vacancies which occurred in the council or senate. The senate, or council of elders, bore the same name by which bodies excrcising similar functions are described in the Homeric poems.* But its number was fixed, as ArisThe contrast between the lot of the slave totle seems to intimate, to thirty; it was unand the Dorian freeman is strongly marked by questionably not indefinite. They were elected the language of a Cretan drinking song. "My by the people from the most deserving of those great wealth is my spear, my sword, and my who had filled the supreme magistracy, and they stout buckler, my faithful guard: with this I retained their office for life. They were the plough, with this I reap, with this I press the councillors of the ten chief magistrates, adminsweet juice of the vine: this is my title to be istered the internal affairs of the state, and master of the minoa. They who dare not grasp watched over its tranquillity and order. They the spear, or the sword, or the faithful buckler, were also judges, it would seem, as we hear of fall prostrate at my feet, and adore me as their no distinction, both in civil and criminal causes; lord, and salute me as the great king." To be subject, it is said, to no responsibility, which, free from all labour, save warlike exercises, to perhaps, may only mean that their judgments live upon the toil of his subjects and slaves, to could not be reversed, and their judicial power know no care but the defence of his station, was not limited by any written law. It cannot, was the glory and happiness of the citizen; and however, be supposed that they were independto secure to him the enjoyment of these priv-ent of all rule and usage, or that they could ileges was the main object of all the institutions of the state.

The forms of government established in the Dorian colonies in Crete so closely resembled each other, that we find one only described as ommon to all; a uniformity which shows hat they sprang naturally out of the character of the age and the people, and were not the result of accident or design. In fact, they follow wery closely the model exhibited in the Homeric poems, presenting only one material deviation, and perhaps defining more precisely some points which, in the heroic states, appear to have been left undetermined. The royal dignity seems never to have been known in any of these colonies; none of their leaders, perhaps, were of sufficient eminence to assume it; when Aristotle observes that it once existed in Crete, he had, most probably, the age of Minos in his View. In the earliest period to which our information goes back, we find the place of the kings occupied by magistrates, who bore the peculiar title of cosmus. They were ten in

with impunity disregard principles hallowed by public opinion. We could wish to know whener their jurisdiction extended over the subject and servile classes; but on this, as on many other interesting questions relating to them, the ancients have not satisfied our curiosity What has been said shows that the Cretan Constitution was strictly aristocratical, like those which prevailed throughout Greece in the heroic ages. This appears still more clearly when we consider the station occupied by the assembly of the people in the Cretan system. The people, it must be remembered, are here the conquering nation, the Dorians, and their fellow-adventurers. Among these we have seen that certain families-perhaps those of the pure Dorian blood-were distinguished from the rest, and exclusively entitled to all the honours of the state. The remainder formed a commonalty, which, however, was itself inconsiderable in number, compared with the subject population. It might be assembled by the magistrates whenever they had any measures to lay before it. But the individual members were not allowed only pronounce upon them as a body. It is to discuss these measures; the assembly could txpoowntol. As in most other Greek states all the even extremely doubtful whether it had the slaves were acquired in this manner, this epithet would power of rejecting them, and was not summon. here have been superfluous; in Crete it marked an excep-ed simply to receive and sanction the decrees ion to the general rule.

* àpaμi@тai or kλapūrai, from the data or Kλñpot, par

zels of land.

Ephorus in Athen., vi., p. 263, compared with Carysius. Athen., xiv., p. 639.

This Scolion Hybrias has been separately edited and illustr by Graefenhau, Mulhuse, 1833.

A king of the Cretan town of Axus is mentioned by Herodotus (iv., p. 154) as grandfather of the founder of Cyrene, according to the Cyrenean tradition. But it is not certain what office may have been described by that name. It may have been substituted for the genuine Cretan title.

of its rulers. This may seem, indeed, to imply a power of withholding its assent; but, so long as habit retained its sway, this alternative was perhaps never thought of. The common freemen in the heroic states appear to have enjoyed no higher privileges.

Γερωσία, βουλή.

The principal duties of the private citizen meals derived their Cretan appellation from the were to be discharged, not in the popular assem- men who partook of them,* who were divided bly, but in the field of battle: his chiet pleasures into companies, originally, perhaps, correspondwere those which he derived from the societying to some relations of kindred, but afterward of his equals; and the main end of the institu- associated by mutual inclination and free choice. tions which regulated his private life was to The management of the table was committed prepare him for the one, and to afford him the to a woman, undoubtedly of free birth, who amplest opportunities of enjoying the other.openly selected the choicest part of the fare for The most important feature in the Cretan mode the persons most distinguished for valour or of life is the usage of the Syssitia, or public prudence. One regulation, peculiar to the Cremeals, of which all the citizens partook, with- tan system, is remarkably characteristic of the out distinction of rank or age. The origin of friendly intercourse which prevailed, at least in this institution cannot be traced: we learn, early times, among the Dorian cities of the however, from Aristotle, that it was not pecu-island. In every town were two public buildhar to the Greeks, but existed still earlier in ings, destined, the one for the lodging of stranthe south of Italy among the Enotrians.* The gers, the other for the meals of the citizens; Cretan usage, in common with all the rest, he and in the banqueting-room, two tables were attributes to Minos. This, however, must be set apart for the foreign guests. The temperate considered rather as the philosopher's opinion repast was followed by conversation, which was than as an historical tradition. But as we have first made to turn on the affairs of the state; no such reason for questioning his authority and it cannot be doubted that the freedom of with regard to the Italian custom, and as the discussion allowed at the festive board made institution itself bears all the marks of high an- no slight amends for the restrictions imposed tiquity, it would seem probable enough that the on the deliberations of the public assembly. Peloponnesian colonies might have found it in After this, the discourse fell on valiant deeds Crete, even if no people of the same race had and illustrious men, whose praises might rouse before settled in the island. That they intro- the younger hearers to generous emulation. duced it there could only be proved by showing Whatever may have been the origin of this that it existed in Sparta before the time of Ly-institution, it manifestly answered several imcurgus, or in other Dorian states, and of this portant ends besides that for which it was imthere does not seem to be sufficient evidence.mediately designed. On the one hand, it mainIts analogy with the public banquets of the tained a stricter separation between the ruling Homeric heroes is too slight to authorize us to and the subject classes; it kept alive in the consider it as an old Hellenic usage,† unless, former the full consciousness of their superior indeed, we go back to the patriarchal communi- station and their national character: on the ties in the infancy of society; but we then other hand, it bound the citizens together by want an historical deduction to carry it down ties of the most endearing intimacy, taught to the period in which we find it really existing. them to look on each other as members of one Still, its uniform prevalence in the Dorian colo- family, and gave an efficacy to the power nies in Crete is a strong argument for believing of public opinion which must have nearly that they did not adopt it from the mother-coun- superseded the necessity of any penal laws. try. It may have obtained among the Dorians To this we may add, that it provided a main before the invasion of Peloponnesus, and may part of the education of the young. have been retained by the Spartans, because it they had reached their eighteenth year, the was adapted to the wants of their peculiar situ- sons accompanied their fathers to the public ation, while it soon fell into disuse among their hall with the orphans of the deceased. The brethren. In most of the Cretan cities the ex-younger waited at the table; the rest, seated pense of the public meals was defrayed by the beside the men on a lower bench, received a state, out of the revenue of the domain lands portion suited to their age, of plainer fare, and and the tribute they received from their sub-listened to the conversation of their elders. jeets, so that no distinction could arise between They were here under the eye of an officer pubthe rich and the poor. Each individual received licly appointed to superintend them. How far, his separate share, out of which he paid his in other respects, the state assumed a direct contributions to one of the public tables and control over their education, does not appear; provided for the females of his household. In but it seems highly probable that the same offiLyctus a different system seems to have pre-cer who watched over their behaviour in public, vailed: the citizen devoted a tithe of the fruits also enforced the other branches of discipline to of his own land to the same purposes;|| but per- which they were subject. They were early haps there, as elsewhere, the poor were sup-inured to hardship and laborious exercises: the ported from the public stock. These social

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Till

same coarse garment served them for summer
and winter; and their strength and spirit were
proved by frequent combats between rival com-
panies. The intervals of leisure left by this
species of training were filled up by some sim-
ple lessons in poetry and music, and, in later
times at least, in the rudiments of letters. The
songs which they learned contained the pre-
cepts and maxims enforced by the laws, hymns
to the gods, and the praises of the illustrious
dead. From the beginning of their eighteenth

They were called 'Avipti v or 'Avèpia.
+ Linedovopos. Ephorus in Strabo, x., p. 483.

It has been usual,

year they were subjected to a stricter rule. different opinions that have been entertained as They were now divided into troops,* each head- to its origin and its author. ed by a youth of some noble family, whose pride both with ancient and modern writers, to conit was to collect the greatest number he could sider it as the work of a single man-as the under his command. He was himself placed fruit of the happy genius, or of the commanding under the control of some elder person, general- character of Lycurgus, who has generally been ly his father, who directed the exercises of the supposed to have had the merit, if not of introop in the chase, the course, and the wrest-venting it, yet of introducing and establishing ling-school. On stated days the rival troops it among his countrymen. Viewed in this light, engaged in a mimic fight, with movements meas- it has justly excited not only admiration, but asured by the flute and the lyre; and the blows tonishment; it appears a prodigy of art, on they exchanged on these occasions were dealt which we gaze as on an Egyptian pyramid-a not merely with the hand and with clubs, but structure wonderful in its execution, but myswith iron weapons, probably with a view of put- terious in its design. We admire the power ting their skill, patience, and self-command, as which the legislator has exerted over his felwell as their strength, to the trial, by the ne- low-men; but while we are amazed at his boldcessity of defending themselves without inflict-ness and success, we can scarcely refrain from ing a dangerous wound. How long the youths remained in these troops we are not informed. As soon as they quitted them to enter into the society of the men, the law compelled each to choose a bride, who, however, was not permitted, it is said, to undertake the duties of a matron until she was found capable of dis-only a few slight touches from the hand of man, charging them; that is, probably, she continued for some time to live under the roof of her parents. The Cretan institutions sanctioned, and even enforced, a close intimacy between the men and the youths, which was undoubtedly designed to revive that generous friendship of the heroic ages which was so celebrated in song, and to add a new motive to the love of glory in the noblest spirits. But the usage, which was singularly regulated by the law,† degenerated in later times into a frightful license, which was often mistaken for its primitive form, and consequently attributed to political views, which, if they had even existed, would have been equally odious and absurd.‡

CHAPTER VIII.

THE LEGISLATION OF LYCURGUS.

We now return to the Dorians of Peloponnesus, whose history, scanty as is the information transmitted to us concerning its earlier ages, is still somewhat less obscure, and much more interesting than that of the other Greek tribes during the same period. Our attention will for some time be fixed on the steps by which Sparta rose to a supremacy above the rest of the Dorian states, which was finally extended over the whole of Greece. This is the most momentous event of the period intervening between the return of the Heracleids and the Persian wars. It was, in part, an effect of the great addition which Sparta made to her territory by swallowing up that of her western neighbour. But this conquest may itself be regarded as a result of those peculiar institutions which, once firmly established, decided her character and destiny to the end of her political existence, and which are in themselves one of the most interesting subjects that engage the attention of the statesman and the philosopher in the history of Greece.

Before we attempt to describe the Spartan Constitution, it will be necessary to notice the † Ephorus in Strabo, x., 483.

· ἀγέλαι.
Aristotle, Pol., ii., 10.

suspecting that he must have been partly swayed by the desire of raising an extraordinary monument to his own fame. According to the opposite view of the subject, it was not an artificial fabric, but the spontaneous growth of a peculiar nature, which at the utmost required

and the agency of Lycurgus shrinks into so narrow a compass that even his personal existence becomes a question of much doubt and of little moment. The truth will, perhaps, be found to lie midway between these two extremes. The reasons which prevent us from unreservedly adopting either opinion will be best understood if we consider, first, the history of Lycurgus himself, as transmitted to us by the general consent of the ancients, and then the mode in which they describe the scope and character of his institutions.

Experience proves that scarcely any amount of variation as to the time and circumstances of a fact, in the authors who record it, can ever be a sufficient ground for doubting its reality. But the chronological discrepancies in the accounts of Lycurgus, which struck Plutarch as singularly great, on closer inspection do not appear very considerable. Xenophon, indeed, in a passage where it is his object to magnify the antiquity of the laws of Sparta, mentions a tradition or opinion that Lycurgus was a contemporary of the Heracleids.* This, however, ought not, perhaps, to be interpreted more literally than the language of Aristotle, in one of his extant works, where he might seem to suppose that the lawgiver lived after the close of the Messenian wars. The great mass of evidence, including that of Aristotle and of Thucydides, fixes his legislation in the ninth century before our era; and the variations within this period, if not merely apparent, are unimportant. There was also a disagreement, indicating some uncertainty, as to his parentage. We have already seen, that after the death of Aristodemus, the throne of Sparta was shared by his two sons, Eurysthenes and Procles. The kingly office continued to be hereditary in their lines, which were equal in power, though a certain precedence or dignity was allowed to that of Eurysthenes, grounded on his supposed priority of birth. It was not, however, from these remote ancestors that the two royal families derived their distinguishing appellations. The elder house was called the Agids, after Agis, son of

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