The pirates of the ancient Mediterranean: reading answers and analysis
Piracy in the Mediterranean is thousands of years older than the Caribbean pirates everyone pictures. The passage explains why the coastline suited it, how early states sometimes hired pirates, what Egyptian letters and Greek writers said about them, and how Rome finally cleared the sea under Pompey, turning many pirates into farmers.
Questions 14-26 · 13 marks · 4 question blocks
Where the answers sit
Paragraph matching (14-19) jumps around, and G is used twice. The two choose-TWO blocks follow the passage: 20-21 sit in B, 22-23 in E. The summary (24-26) is all in F.
Questions 14-19
Do this block last, after the other questions have walked you through the text. G answers two of the six items (the campaign itself and what happened to the pirates afterwards), so don't cross it off once used. The 'how people today picture pirates' item is the opening image in A, easy to skip because it looks like scene-setting.
| Question | Answer | Also accepted |
|---|---|---|
| 14 | D | — |
| 15 | G | — |
| 16 | C | — |
| 17 | A | — |
| 18 | G | — |
| 19 | B | — |
Questions 20-21
Everything you need is in paragraph B. The right pair is local knowledge that let pirates avoid retaliation, and a living that came from the sea (fish, salt, boats) because the land was too rugged to farm. Coves are in the passage, but as hiding places for boats, not storage for stolen goods.
| Question | Answer | Also accepted |
|---|---|---|
| 20-21 | B and D(in either order) | — |
Questions 22-23
Paragraph E. Homer and Thucydides praise pirates, and Demosthenes' story shows ambassadors robbing a ship on an official trip. The distractors twist the text: Greek opinion stayed the same after Homer, and the problem was too many pirates, not too few.
| Question | Answer | Also accepted |
|---|---|---|
| 22-23 | C and E(in either order) | — |
Questions 24-26
The summary follows paragraph F sentence by sentence. Each gap is a noun: what the attacked ships carried, what the Senate demanded, and what kidnappers asked for their hostages.
| Question | Answer | Also accepted |
|---|---|---|
| 24 | grain | — |
| 25 | punishment | — |
| 26 | ransom | — |
The questions most people get wrong
Option E tempts because coves appear in B. The passage uses them for hiding boats before an attack, never for storing stolen goods.
G, not F. Offering pirates farmland far from the sea is the 'encouraged not to return' detail, and it closes the final paragraph.
Write 'punishment', the noun. 'Punish' appears in paragraph D about the king of Alashiya, which pulls some people to the wrong paragraph and the wrong form.
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The full Cambridge 19 Test 1 reading paper: all three passages, 60 minutes, marked the second you finish with a review of every answer. Already done it? Take it again and see if the same traps still get you.
Cambridge IELTS 19, Test 1, Reading Passage 2. The passage name belongs to Cambridge University Press. No passage text or question wording is reproduced on this page. The answers are published for self-marking, and the analysis is our own.