Answer: Option D
:
D
The author talks about the usual order of military and economic revival preceding cultural revival in the first two paragraphs and gives examples to support the same. Further, in the last paragraph, the author tries to bring to lime light that in case of the Byzantine Empire, the commonly accepted order of progress was reversed, with cultural rebirth preceding economic and military revival. If we look at the answer options, options (a) and (d) are similar. But answer option (d) is the most appropriate answer choice because it is more generic than answer option (a) which states that the Byzantine Empire was a “unique case” in which the usual order of revival was reversed. We can’t accept this as the most appropriate answer choice because we don’t know whether Byzantine Empire was the only case where such a thing happened.