Q16 - The ancient Romans understood

[tzyc]

Just want to double check...
"outlying parts of their empire" and "regions dominated by large cities" are different parts...right?
At first I thought it refers to the same part but mentioned in different words..
How do those 2 parts different?
From (E) it seems the latter has larger population though...
Thank you

[tommywallach]

Hey Strawberry,

To your first question, yes those are different areas. If we look up "outlying" in the dictionary, we get: "situated far from a center; remote".

So that has to be different from "regions dominated by large cities."

This is an Explain a Result question, so we need to look at the seemingly contradictory facts:

1) Romans used water power in outlying areas.
2) Romans didn't use water power in large cities.

Our answer needs to resolve this "contradiction":

(A) might seem relevant, but the issue isn't about whether the Romans had water in cities, but whether they used water power.

(B) would not explain anything. If the water flow was sometimes very weak in urban areas, that might explain why they chose not to use it. But this answer says "flow in rivers and streams was substantial throughout the year," so water could have been used for power.

(C) starts out well (i.e. maybe they didn't use water power in cities because it could be easily sabotaged), but then it goes wrong. It if was easy and cheap to repair such sabotage, then why not use water power?

(D) is very tempting, but it still doesn't tell us very much. It's good to know that other types of energy were used, but why not use water power? It's free and easy, right?

(E) finally gives us a reason not to use water power in cities. It would have a specific negative effect. Not only would it massively raise unemployment, but it would even cause general social unrest!

Hope that helps!

-t