The idea of ‘breathing out’ something called menos ‘mental power’ implies that such power was previously ‘breathed in’, that is, ‘breathed into’ the hero, by a divine force. Such a ‘breathing in’ happens for example at I.10.482: as it is pointed out in the comment on that verse, the goddess Athena is pictured there in the act of literally ‘breathing’, pneîn, into the hero Odysseus something called menos ‘mental power’. Here at I.11.508, the aggregate of warriors who are ‘breathing-out [pneîn] mental-power [menos]’ are the Achaeans viewed as a group; so also at I.03.008; by contrast, at I.02.536, the epithet applies to a sub-group, the Abantes.