Odyssey 10.558 · Book 10, lines 558–560
His soul went down to Hades
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ἄψορρον καταβῆναι ἰὼν ἐς κλίμακα μακρήν, ἀλλὰ καταντικρὺ τέγεος πέσεν· ἐκ δέ οἱ αὐχὴν ἀστραγάλων ἐάγη, ψυχὴ δʼ Ἄϊδόσδε κατῆλθεν.
to go back down by the long ladder, but fell straight from the roof; and his neck was snapped from the vertebrae, and his soul went down to Hades.
Word by word
The setting
Startled awake and still drunk, Elpenor forgets to climb back down by the ladder. He steps off the edge of the roof.
A note on this passage
The death is quick and physical. He forgets the ladder, walks off the edge, and the fall breaks his neck clean from the spine. The last clause is the plainest in the language: his soul went down to Hades.
The line does a second thing beneath the first. Odysseus is at this very moment preparing his crew for a voyage to the house of the dead, and one of them arrives there first, ahead of the ship, by a drunken misstep. The descent to Hades has already begun, not with ritual or heroism but with the smallest of accidents, and Elpenor's soul is the first to make the trip they are all now bound on.
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