The hero Dexiades is described at I.07.015 by way of the participle epi-almenos meaning ‘one who leaps on’, and the preverb epi- ‘on’ of the participle takes as its object the noun hippoi ‘horses’ in the genitive case. But the meaning of this combination is not ‘one who leaps on horses’ but rather ‘one who leaps on the chariot drawn by horses’. That, is, hippoi in such a context is an elliptic plural referring not only to the two horses that conventionally draw a chariot in Homeric diction but to the chariot drawn by the two horses. In the action being described here, the same hero Dexiades is mortally wounded at I.07.13 by a spear-throw that hits him and knocks him out of the chariot, and here the preposition ex ‘out of’ in combination with the noun hippoi ‘horses’ as its grammatical object in the genitive case means that the hero has been knocked off the platform of the chariot, falling out of the chariot and landing on the ground with a mighty thud. In short, then, epi + the genitive of hippoi at I.07.11 means ‘on the chariot’, with reference to standing on the platform of a chariot, while ex + the genitive of hippoi at I.07.13 means ‘out of the chariot’, with reference to getting knocked out of the chariot while standing on the platform.