The correct answer is option d: merchants
In grammar rules, an antecedent can be identified in a sentence because it is later replaced by a pronoun. An antecedent also refers in a sentence to something that happened in the past.
In the sentence provided as an example, the Venetian 'merchants' is the noun that is later replaced by its respective pronoun (theirs). The verb brought also tells us it was something that happened in the past.
<span>The
statement that best explains how Neil de Grasse Tyson’s “Death by Black Hole”
and Billy Collins’s “Man Listening to Disc” present differing views about the
universe would be choice letter c, “Collins’s poem puts forth the idea that
humans can become the center of the universe, while Tyson reveals that humans
are insignificantly small and weak in comparison to a black hole.<span>”</span></span>
