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The Swiss, after the defeat of Charles the Bold at Granson (A. D. 1476), are said to have been equally ignorant. (P. de Commines, Mémoires, v. 2) ‘Il y en eut qui vendirent grande quantité de plats et d'escuelles d'argent pour deux grands blancs la pièce, cuidans que ce fut d'estaing’.

The point of the story, ‘and that is the way the Aeginetans first grew rich,’ reveals its character as a malicious Attic witticism, invented in days when Aegina's commercial greatness had been so completely eclipsed by the new power of Athens that the distant and profitable voyages of the earlier Aeginetan traders (ii. 178. 3; iv. 152. 3; vii. 147. 2) had been forgotten.

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