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The account in H. is based on two facts of Eastern life: (1) Imprisonment as a punishment was unknown; the criminal, however, became a state slave for shorter or longer period. (2) Town sites are usually higher than the country round; the mud houses rapidly fall into ruins, their remains are not removed, but levelled as a foundation for their successors. Greek imagination, however, always attributed the result of a long process to an individual act. For a curious result of this rise of height cf. 138. 2; the temple is below the city level. A similar feature is often seen in modern churches, but on a less scale.

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