Codex Berinensis, a Florentine copy of an ancient Roman medical treati

VeritasKarishma - I don't know if this is a good argument or if the arguments from GMAT in today's world will match this one. I do not see any option actually strengthening even a little for the following reasons:
Argument has been supported by the premise that the text contains description of plague about 1148, but the text is not dated. Now, the argument does not really makes a differentiation that if 1148 was within the text or not and as much as I understand from the argument, 1148 was mentioned in the document.

Now, even if any other plague existed, it does not matter because document describes about the plague specifically dated at 1148. Just to give more clarity, that I can write about the spanish pandemic flu of 1918 even today, but I may not date the text. And 1000 years later, a GMAT argument will be created on top of it.

I hope I am able to explain the issue here clearly. Thus, I do not see even Option (D) strengthening even a bit.

The argument says this: A letter written by fourth copyist mentions a plague that killed many people in Florence in 1148.

The fourth copyist had written a letter in which he had talked about a plague in 1148.
So even if you write a letter today about the Spanich flu, you will write that it happened in 1918.

Well so it seems that the plague in 1148 could be the reason for disturbance. But there could be other disturbances and one of them could have been the reason for changing copyists. Option (D) tells us that there was no other plague. It increases the probability that this plague of 1148 is the disturbance.
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GMATNinja EducationAisle please could you help me understand the logic of (D) I chose it because the other options just didn't make any sense. But I would like to know how by knowing that only one outbreak took place in 1100s proves that CB was produced in 1148? I mean even if there was another outbreak in 1158 how does it matter?

Well, then it is possible that disruption (that is the reason for four different copyists working on CB) happened in 1158, resulting in CB getting produced in 1158.

Notice that the year of CB's production and the plague of 1148 could be entirely unrelated. D eliminates/minimizes the possibility that these two events were unrelated, because if there was only one plague in Florence in the 1100s, then perhaps, there was a correlation between plague of 1148 and disruption of CB.
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GMATNinja, EducationAisle, VeritasKarishma, MartyTargetTestPrep

While I am convinced with the reasoning of disturbances (and consequently need of multiple writers) due to an event at particular time/year, I am finding it difficult that same reasoning confirms completion and publication of the text in the same year.
Well, the disturbances could have caused 3 authors to take/try work in same year but how can we know if the fourth one took the project (began working on) in same year? moreover, even we assume that fourth author worked on last 2-10 pages that does NOT necessarily mean text completed in same year. What if fourth author took a day, a month, 2-10 months or 2-10 years to complete (by taking breaks in between)...?

I am unable to understand and this question already ate my day..
please help....
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It is a weak argument. We have little data to support our conclusion. We are asked to provide additional data to support it. Note that we are not asked to provide data to establish the conclusion - only support it a bit more.
There was a plague in 1148. The fourth copyist wrote it in a letter. So there was a major disruption in 1148. That could explain frequent change of copyists. So the treatise could have been under production in 1148. That is why new copyists could have been needed every so often.
But this is just a hypothesis.

We need more data to establish it. What kind of data?
- there was no other plague around that time (say 50 yrs before and after)
- there was no war around that time
- there was no natural calamity at that time
- Normally only one copyist was maintained if it was possible to.
etc.

We are a long way away from establishing the conclusion.
All we are looking for is some more support for it.

Option (D) supports it a bit. So it is correct.
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Thanks VeritasKarishma.
So the learning here is to learn the assumption that there was disruption that caused involved multiple authors AND work was continued AND published as soon as it was completed.


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We don't need to assume anything about when it was published.
It was a Florentine copy produced (written/created) during the time of a major upheaval.
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IanStewart MartyTargetTestPrep KarishmaB thank you for your posts. You guys made me feel confident to realize that this argument is weak and I am not the only one who finds ALL the choices weak. I was confused between (B) and (D) for the reasons mentioned above (and covered by) your posts. However, I still have one major doubt.

Argument:

- CB is a copy of a Roman medical treatise.
- It is a 100-page copy. 80 pages were by a single copyist while the remaining 20 were by 3 different copyists.
- 80 by 1 and 20 by 3 indicates some significant disruption
- A letter by the last copyist mentions a plague that killed many people in 1148

Conclusion: CB was produced in 1148

Question: If the plague was in 1148 then Shouldn't the final work be produced in a year when there is no plague? or at least when things settle down?

Please could you help me understand how can one, in any possible way, conclude that CB can be produced in a year when a disaster strikes?

Thanks in advance

One question becomes: what was going on with the last three copyists? They were only copying 20 pages, which doesn't seem like much work, but the first copyist was replaced by someone else, then that one was replaced by yet another person. Why didn't one copyist just do all 20 pages? If each copyist could only do about seven pages and then needed to stop, that suggests they were working on the manuscript during a very unsettled period.

The fact that one copyist stopped after 80 pages isn't evidence of much of anything -- that could happen for all kinds of reasons. It's the fact that so many copyists started and stopped working on the last 20 pages of the document that tells us that something, like a war or plague, might have been constantly disrupting their work (and it also suggests that they tried to work on the copying while that disruption was happening).
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Hoozan, here is how I thought about it:

80 pages were written by one person. So its not like the treatise was such that it needed to be written by different people. Then when last 20 pages were left, another person started writing. He left after 5 pages, another person started writing. He left after 7 pages and again another person started.
Why? There must have been some upheaval.

As for your question, as you know we are living in covid times. But does life stop? No, we keep working as we can. If one person gets sick, another takes up his work. Are we waiting for covid to go away before completing any projects we might have started? No.
So it is not reasonable to assume that it could not have been produced in times of upheaval. In fact, it looks like it has been produced in difficult times with copyists changing ever so often.
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That makes a lot of sense. Thanks KarishmaB

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A: neither strengthens nor weakens, irrelevant
B: length of the plague is irrelevant
C: only shows that other copyists took about 20 days to complete but it is irrelevant to the disruption caused by the plague
E: Similar to Option C just talks about copyists' output but there might be reasons other than the disruption caused by a plague for that output
D: BEST CHOICE

The passage suggests that the Codex Berinensis was likely produced in 1148 due to clues such as the different copyists and a letter mentioning a plague in Florence that year. We need to identify the option that strongly supports the hypothesis that Codex Berinensis was produced in 1148.

Option (A) states that there are no known samples of the handwriting of the first three copyists other than what is found in Codex Berinensis. This information does not directly support the hypothesis that the Codex Berinensis was produced in 1148.

Option (B) mentions that according to the fourth copyist, the plague lasted for 10 months. While this provides information about the duration of the plague, it does not directly support the hypothesis regarding the production date of Codex Berinensis.

Option (C) states that a scribe would be able to copy a page of text similar to Codex Berinensis in a day. While this provides information about the speed of copying, it doesn't specifically support the hypothesis of the Codex Berinensis being produced in 1148.

Option (D), the correct answer, states that there was only one outbreak of the plague in Florence in the 1100s. This information strongly supports the hypothesis that Codex Berinensis was produced in 1148 since the letter mentioned in the passage refers to a plague outbreak in that year.

Option (E) mentions that the number of pages produced by a single scribe becomes smaller with each successive change of copyist. While this information provides insight into the division of work among the copyists, it doesn't directly support the hypothesis regarding the production date of Codex Berinensis.

In conclusion, option (D) is the statement that most strongly supports the hypothesis that Codex Berinensis was produced in 1148 since it confirms that there was only one outbreak of the plague in Florence during the 1100s, as mentioned in the letter connected to the Codex.

KarishmaB this is not clear. If the plague was in 1101 then how could they mention about a future plague in 1148 in the copy so not sure how the plague in 1101 do anything? EducationAisle

avigutman KarishmaB egmat @verbalexperts GMATNinja does produced refer to published date or year when it started being created?

'produced' means 'written (by hand)' here. Considering it is a small book, the author is implying that it was written in a single year. There is no mention of publishing etc.
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