2. 外语
  3. In 600 B. C., the Assyrian Empire had just fallen. At its【C1】______ , it had extended from Egypt to Babylonia, for an extreme le

In 600 B. C., the Assyrian Empire had just fallen. At its【C1】______ , it had extended from Egypt to Babylonia, for an extreme le

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问题     In 600 B. C., the Assyrian Empire had just fallen. At its【C1】______ , it had extended from Egypt to Babylonia, for an extreme length of 1,400 miles. It was soon to be replaced by the Persian Empire,【C2】______ extended from Cyrenaica to Kashmir, for an extreme length of 3,000 miles. Undoubtedly, the common【C3】______ of these empires had only the vaguest【C4】______ of the extent of the realm and were content to live and die on their own few【C5】______ or, on some【C6】______ , to travel from village to neighboring village. Travellers and soldiers, however, must have had some concept of the vastness of these empires and of the still greater vastness of【C7】______ must be beyond. There must have been the ancient empires who occupied themselves with what might be considered the first cosmological problem【C8】______ scholars: Is there an end to the Earth?
    To be sure, no man in ancient times,【C9】______ far he traveled, ever came to any actual end of the Earth, at most, he reached the【C10】______ of an ocean whose limits were【C11】______ the horizon. If he transferred to a ship and sailed outward, he never succeeded in racing the end either. Did that mean there was no end? The answer to that question depended on the general shape one assumed for the Earth. All men, before the time of the Greeks, made the【C12】______ that the Earth was flat, as indeed it appears to be,【C13】______ the minor irregularities of the mountains and valleys. If any pre-Greek ancient thought【C14】______ , his name has not come down to us and the record of his thinking has not【C15】______ . Yet if the Earth were indeed flat, an end of some sort would seem an almost foregone conclusion. The alternative would be a flat surface that would go on forever and forever—one that would be【C16】______ in extent, in other words. This is a most uncomfortable concept; throughout history, men have【C17】______ to avoid the concept of endlessness in space and time as【C18】______ impossible to grasp and understand and therefore something that cannot easily be worked with or【C19】______ out.【C20】______ , if the Earth does have an end—if it is finite, there are other difficulties. Would not people fall off if they approached the end too closely?
【C19】
选项 A、rationalized
B、discussed
C、considered
D、reasoned
答案D
解析
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