Hi,
I received a PM to reply to this post.
In his eagerness to find a city worthy of Priam, the German archaeologist Schliemann cut through Troy and uncovered a civilization a thousand years older as was the city Homer's heroes knew.



Here the comparison is between the "a civilization" and "the city" that was known to Homer's heroes.



1. The sentence uses the incorrect idiom. The correct idiom is "X more older than Y" and not "X more older as Y".
2. The logical comparison is between two nouns as discussed in the meaning analysis. But the way the sentence has been written, here X = "a civilization" (noun) and Y = "was the city" (verb + noun). The two entities are not grammatically parallel. Since what follows the marker should be logically and grammatically parallel to what precedes it, we just need the noun after the marker and not the verb.

POE:

(A) older as was the city Homer's heroes knew: Wrong as discussed.

(B) more ancient than the city known to Homer's heroes: Correct answer. The sentence uses the correct idiom and also the entities compared are grammatically parallel as well.

(C) older than was the city known to Homer's heroes: Wrong. Same parallelism error as in A.

(D) more ancient of a city than Homer's heroes knew: The comparison is not even proper here. X = "a civilization... more ancient of a city", Y = "Homer's heroes knew". Also "more ancient of a city" is awkward.

(E) older of a city than was the one known to Homer's heroes: Same awkward expression as in D. Same parallelism error as in A.



1. In comparisons, the idiom must be worded correctly.
2. The entities compared must be logically as well grammatically parallel to each other.

The concepts tested in this sentence have been covered in e-gmat concepts:
1. Level 2 - Idioms - Comparison
2. Level 2 - Parallelism - Comparison
Hope this helps.
Shraddha