Video Explanation

Text Explanation

A question about the Roman poet Horace (65-8 BCE).  

Split #1: the idioms of comparison. One correct idiom is "as great as", for two things of the same size. Another correct idiom is "greater than", for two things of unequal size. Here, the word "greater" appears before the underlined section, so we must have "than", not "as" --- choices (C) & (D) make this mistake.

Split #2: individual vs. category. Horace was a Roman poet, so it is illogical to say he had greater influence "than any poet from ancient Rome" --- that would illogically imply that he had more influence than himself! Obviously, we want to compare Horace to the other ancient Roman poets, so we need the word "other." Choice (A) omits the word "other" and is therefore incorrect.

Split #3: the part of the sentence after the semi-colon begins with "his poems" as the subject ------ his poems …. "have had a much greater influence than" ______________. It is illogical to compare poems to poets, and choices (A) & (B) & (C) make this mistake. Choices (D) & (E) correctly have "those of any other poet": in that structure, the pronoun "those" stands for poems, so we are logically comparing poems to poems.

For all these reasons, (E) is the only possible answer.