To what is ahab comparing himself? aye, tiny mosses in these warped cracks. no such green weather stains on ahab’s head! there’s the difference now between man’s old age and matter’s. but aye we both grow old together; sound in our hulls, though, are we not, my ship? aye, minus a leg, that’s all. by heaven this dead wood has the better of my live flesh every way. i can’t compare with it; and i’ve known some ships made of dead trees outlast the lives of men made of the most vital stuff of vital fathers. a. the masthead b. tiny mosses c. a man’s leg d. the lives of men

Read this paragraph from chapter 5 of the prince. there are, for example, the spartans and the romans. the spartans held athens and thebes, establishing there an oligarchy: nevertheless they lost them. the romans, in order to hold capua, carthage, and numantia, dismantled them, and did not lose them. they wished to hold greece as the spartans held it, making it free and permitting its laws, and did not succeed. so to hold it they were compelled to dismantle many cities in the country, for in truth there is no safe way to retain them otherwise than by ruining them. and he who becomes master of a city accustomed to freedom and does not destroy it, may expect to be destroyed by it, for in rebellion it has always the watchword of liberty and its ancient privileges as a rallying point, which neither time nor benefits will ever cause it to forget. and whatever you may do or provide against, they never forget that name or their privileges unless they are disunited or dispersed, but at every chance they immediately rally to them, as pisa after the hundred years she had been held in bondage by the florentines. what idea is stressed in the passage? the desire for liberty the establishment of an oligarchy the dismantling of an acquired state the tendency toward rebellion