Having the crack Phoenician fleet being decimated by the

Having the crack Phoenician fleet being decimated by the much smaller Greek fleet in the straits of Salamis, the Persian king Xerxes, whose initial arrogance quickly changed to horror, fled back to Asia and left his remaining troops under the generalship of his brother-in-law, Mardonius.


A.Having the crack Phoenician fleet being decimated by the much smaller Greek fleet in the straits of Salamis
B.In view of his crack Phoenician fleet had been decimated by the much smaller Greek fleet in the straits of Salamis
C.Because of there having been a much smaller Greek fleet in the straits of Salamis that decimated his crack Phoenician fleet
D.Seeing as the crack Phoenician fleet having been decimated by the much smaller Greek fleet in the straits of Salamis
E.His crack Phoenician fleet decimated by the much smaller Greek fleet in the straits of Salamis

How come E is the answer ?



His crack Phoenician fleet (Noun) + (ed-modifier) decimated by the much smaller Greek fleet in the straits of Salamis,

(Independent clause starts)
the Persian king Xerxes (Noun), whose initial arrogance quickly changed to horror,(verb) fled back to Asia and (verb) left his remaining troops under the generalship of his brother-in-law, Mardonius.
(Independent clause ends)

Where is the verb for "His crack Phoenician fleet" (Noun), even if crack is verb or anything else then where is coordination conjunction joining second IC.

I think answer should be anyone of choices A and D.

A.Having the crack Phoenician fleet being decimated by the much smaller Greek fleet in the straits of Salamis
D.Seeing as the crack Phoenician fleet having been decimated by the much smaller Greek fleet in the straits of Salamis

ing modifier Having or Seeing is referring to the Persian king Xerxes and that makes first half to act as participle ing modifier.

I will go with A.

Seeing as the crack Phoenician fleet doesn't look ok.

Experts please help to understand this option E.

The underlined statement is actually a cause for Persian king to fly back to asia..

When E is placed in the question stem it makes an abrupt sense...

Can anybody please explain this question properly..?????

And is these type of question expected to come in GMAT?

The first part before the comma is not a sentence to have a verb. It is just a phrase that modifies the entire following clause. Here the -ed +verb- is a not verb; it is a past participle. Even present participles -verb+ing- can be used in such absolute modifiers. Look at the following examples.
The side-dish prepared, Sarala started to toast the bread slices
The slices toasted, Sarala asked the children to eat their breakfast
Their breakfast done up, the children darted to the bus-stop to catch the school bus
Their school - bus boarded, the children started playing games in their mobiles before reaching the school

These modifiers have also a pronoun often to refer to the noun of the following independent sentence. They are never connected to the main clause with a conjunction. A conjunction will render the sentence as a fragment.

Well i don't see any grammatical error in option A but the meaning of the underlined sentence, when read along with rest of the sentence, is ambiguous.

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And option B, C, and D are grammatically not sound. And option E clearly indicates the meaning of the entire sentence. Hence option E.

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Phoenician fleet belonged to the persian king, Xerxes. It was decimated by a smaller fleet of the Greeks in the straits of Salamis. After this unexpected decimation, the persian king
was horrified and fled back to Asia and left the remaining troops(left over portion of the Phoenician fleet ) under the generalship of his brother-in-law, Mardonius.

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Please comment if i'm wrong...

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Your understanding is correct, though one may as well say that A is grammatically wrong because of use of wrong verbals " having" and "being".

Oh yes....i missed that point! Thanks for correcting me.

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