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[60] ἐπὶ γ́ηραος οὐδῶι, a phrase which recurs also in 24.487, Od. 15.246, Od. 15.348, Od. 23.212. To us the ‘threshold of old age’ suggests merely the beginning, and this meaning the phrase may have in the Odyssean passages as well as in Herod.iii. 14.But in both places of the Iliad it is essential that it should mean, or at least be consistent with, advanced age. Some have thought that as a room is left, as well as entered, by the threshold, it may mean the extreme end, as well as the beginning. Perhaps it is better to remember that in the Homeric house the “οὐδός” is not merely a line to be crossed, it is a place in the hall where people habitually sit; see Od. 4.718, Od. 10.62, and more particularly Od. 17.339, where a man “ἐπὶ οὐδοῦ” is “ἔντοσθε θυράων”. It would seem therefore that the position is that of an inmate of the chamber; a man “ἐπὶ γήραος οὐδῶι” is one who has taken up his abode in the halls of eld. (The proposal to take “οὐδῶι” = “ὁδῶι” as in Od. 17.196 “φάτ᾽ ἀρισφαλέ᾽ ἔμμεναι οὐδόν” is refuted by Od. 23.212 “γήραος οὐδὸν ἱκέσθαι”: though a man may be said to be ‘upon the path of old age,’ we should not speak of reaching the path. Moreover the lengthening in “οὐδός” = “ὁδός” seems to be purely metrical — permissible in the 6th foot but not in the 5th (App. D, c 3). In “οὐδός” = threshold the first syllable is long even in thesis, and therefore by nature.)

The Iliad, edited, with apparatus criticus, prolegomena, notes, and appendices. Walter Leaf. London. Macmillan. 1900.

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