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[246] The ‘threshold’ of old age is not here thought of as the entrance or beginning. The meaning is that he never fairly set foot in old age: cp. Il.22. 60.

Some of the ancients (as Plutarch, Consol. ad Apoll. c. 17) saw in this verse a proof of the saying that those whom the gods love die young. But no such ‘pathetic fallacy’ was in the poet's mind.

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