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[82] ἥμεθα, ‘we bided there.’ It does not seem that the posture of sitting is necessarily implied in “ἧσθαι”. Ameis (Anh. Il.2. 235) quotes Od.2. 255; 3. 186, 263; 4. 101; 8. 506; 10. 260, 536; 11. 82, 142; 13. 407; 14. 41; 18. 224; 20. 221; 21. 100, 425; Il.1. 134, 565; 2. 255; 3. 134; 4. 412; 15. 10, 740; 18. 509; 24. 542, as instances of this usage. Probably Odysseus was standing. ‘We stayed there, I apart from him holding my sword over the blood (in the pit), and on the other side the soul of my comrade was telling his long story.’ Others join ἄνευθεν with ἴσχων, meaning ‘holding out far,’ i. e. at arms length; but this destroys the parallelism with ἑτέρωθεν. Odysseus stands at the side of the pit nearest to the land of the living, and holds his sword out over the blood. Elpenor does not seem to have required to drink the blood before he could remember or speak. Not having been buried, he had not passed into the full condition of the “νεκύων ἀμενηνὰ κάρηνα”.

Homer's Odyssey. W. Walter Merry. James Riddell. D. B. Monro. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1886-1901.

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