In the Homeric poems, the soul is what you risk in battle and what becomes a shade
The Homeric poems use 'soul' in two distinguishable, probably related, ways. It is something risked in battle and lost in death. It is also what at death departs from a person's limbs and travels to the underworld, where it has a more or less pitiful afterlife as a shade or image of the deceased.
The presence of soul distinguishes a living body from a corpse.
AI-generated discussion · Different perspectives
Take
The tempting move is to collapse the two senses: Snell suggested that the thing risked in battle is the same thing that endures as a shade, and the suggestion is called plausible but unverifiable.
Pushback
Why demand a single metaphysics? A poem can use 'soul' for the thing risked in battle and for the shade that remains without turning the two into one defined substance.