At the beginning of Book XXIV, Odysseus has already slaughtered all of Penelope's awful suitors (as well as the traitorous serving women), and Hermes now arrives to lead the suitors' spirits to the underworld. He waves his golden wand, the caduceus, to catch their eyes, and they begin to follow him. The narrator says that, as they follow him, they prattle and jabber, "As in a corner of a monstrous cave the bats fly gibbering, when one tumbles from the rock out of the cluster as they cling together; so gibbering, these moved together." Therefore, via epic simile, Homer compares the shades of the suitors to bats which huddle and cling together in the darkness of some terrible cave. A word choice such as gibber makes them seem utterly senseless and unintelligent, and the comparison is hardly a favorable one. They seem like unthinking animals who move according to their instincts and not by their reason.
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