Odyssey 10.249 · Book 10, lines 249–250
Pressed, he tells the ruin
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ἀλλʼ ὅτε δή μιν πάντες ἀγασσάμεθʼ ἐξερέοντες, καὶ τότε τῶν ἄλλων ἑτάρων κατέλεξεν ὄλεθρον·
But when we all pressed him hard, questioning him, then indeed he recounted the destruction of the other comrades:
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The crew crowd around the speechless Eurylochus and press him with questions until at last he brings out the story of what became of the others.
A note on this passage
It takes the whole crew, questioning hard, to draw the account out of him. Only then does Eurylochus recount the ‘destruction’ of his companions — ὄλεθρος, sheer ruin, though the reader knows the men are not dead but penned.
The gap between what Eurylochus believes and what is true is the point. He saw them go in and never come out; to him that is death. His report will be exact about the facts he witnessed and wrong about the worst of them — the kind of half-knowledge that shapes what Odysseus does next.
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Odyssey 10.249 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/10.249/