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The unification of China in the third century B.C. may have contributed to the rise of a nomadic empire only two decades later in Central Asia. [hl:2]Skilled in archery and horsemanship[/hl:2], nomads formed armies in which every adult male could participate. Political power derived primarily from success in battle against other tribes and in raids on the Chinese, with the successful war chief securing his followers' loyalty by distributing booty. Because the nomadic elite derived power from distributing goods taken from the Chinese, nomadic politics evolved in close association with China. China' s increasing power required that nomads field larger armies themselves, and the prosperity of a united China offered wealth they could extract as payments. This redistribution of wealth generated the political power of nomadic rulers.
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Which statement about nomadic armies is supported by the passage?
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In context, the highlighted phrase serves in part to
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Only since the 1970s have American scholars regularly included mortuary remains in their research on Merovingian Gaul in the early medieval period. Prior to the 1970s, most American medievalists neglected archaeological evidence from burial sites, including skeletal fragments and artifacts, in favor of more familiar historical and documentary sources. This oversight was dismissed by many European scholars as popular distaste in the United States for studies linked to death. Of greater consequence, however, were the small number of American archaeologists occupied with the early medieval period and the inaccessibility to American scholars of locally published and unpublished excavation reports in Western Europe. Lack of attention to important studies of Merovingian mortuary rites was thus not altogether surprising.
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The author suggests that American scholars' lack of attention to Merovingian mortuary remains prior to the 1970s was due in part to the
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The passage suggests which of the following about pre- 1970s research on Merovingian mortuary rites?
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Montesquieu' s influence on James Madison and other founders of the American republic, particularly evident in the theory of separation of powers that informs the United States Constitution, is well noted by scholars. Madison' s critique of elements of Montesquieu' s political philosophy, however, has been given scant attention. The crux of Madison' s criticism concerned Montesquieu' s praise for the British system of balanced government. According to Montesquieu, the institutional and corporate division of powers and checks and balances established in Britain provided for political moderation and made the English constitution the model of free government in the modern world. Most English politicians and writers agreed with the general assumptions underlying the theory of balanced government advocated by Montesquieu; [hl:3]their disagreement[/hl:3] essentially concerned whether the parts of their government were effectively separated and balanced and thus whether liberty was sufficiently protected. A number of French thinkers disagreed with Montesquieu' s assumptions, rejecting their countryman' s theory of balanced government as any real guarantee of stability or safeguard for liberty. [hl:2]Interestingly, when Madison publicly invoked the name of Montesquieu in his writings of the early 1790s, it was primarily to challenge rather than to celebrate the political wisdom of the French oracle[/hl:2]. Madison' s proposed alternative to Montesquieu' s vaunted British model was grounded in the recognition of public opinion as the ruling authority in republican government.
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The primary purpose of the passage is to
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The author regards the situation described in the highlighted sentence as interesting primarily because
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The author of the passage would most likely agree with which of the following statements about "their disagreement" with Montesquieu' s theory?
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In a remote area of Cleland County, there are large, privately owned land parcels with privately constructed and maintained roads crossing them. Drivers use the private roads as shortcuts, so these roads are traveled as much as the area' s public roads. Only the public roads are subject to strict safety regulations about construction and upkeep; nevertheless, the two kinds of road have similar accident rates. Clearly, the regulations do nothing to improve safety conditions on these remote public roads.
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Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the argument?
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Historian Sheilagh Ogilvie challenges the view that training by European craft guilds from 1560 to 1760 was necessary. Her main evidence, however, is based only on female employment in one guild. Like most other guilds, the Wildberg weavers' guild banned women from becoming masters; however, it exempted masters' widows. Indeed, widows accounted for 14 percent of all masters. Ogilvie claims that these "untrained" widows prove "the irrelevance of training." But Wildberg master-widows were not untrained: for, as Ogilvie notes elsewhere, wives and children worked with masters; their training may have been informal, but it existed nonetheless. [hl:1]At least 80 percent of widows were married to masters for longer than the standard six-year apprenticeship; an unknown proportion of the remainder had grown up in weaving families[/hl:1].
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In context, the primary function of the final sentence of the passage is to
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The author' s evaluation of Ogilvie' s argument focuses primarily on Ogilvie' s
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The Great Sphinx, a huge statue in the Sahara Desert, has a lion' s body and a man' s head. The face was long thought to be that of the pharaoh Khafre, who lived around 2600 B.C. Certain erosion patterns recently discovered on the Sphinx' s legs can only have been caused by heavy rains. Since the Sahara has not had heavy rains in over 10,000 years, the face of the Sphinx cannot possibly be that of Khafre.
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The argument that the Sphinx' s face is not that of Khafre relies on which of the following as an assumption?
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Some argue that translators should be paid royalties and share in the commercial success of works they translate rather than earning a flat fee. This is nonsense. Umberto Eco was better translated by Richard Dixon than by William Weaver, but Eco' s bestseller The Name of the Rose, which Weaver translated, was an infinitely better book than Numero Zero, translated by Dixon. Why should one translator grow rich and the other not? Popular novelists J. K. Rowling and Stieg Larsson are easy to translate. Should publishers skew translators' earnings by giving vast sums to those doing work that is immeasurably easier than, say, Galassi' s translations of Montale' s poems? Introducing royalties would encourage the finest translators to drop literary work altogether and concentrate on popular novels.
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The author of the passage would be most likely to agree with which of the following statements about authors and their translators?
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Which of the following is an assumption on which the passage' s argument depends?
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