It has long been noted that there are links between the Homeric portrayals of Odysseus' companions and the suitors. These two largely anonymous groups of IthacansFootnote 1 are connected not only by their ἀτασθαλίαι (‘reckless deeds’)Footnote 2 but also by the fact that by the end of the Odyssey both groups will be dead. Clearly, these fatalities are – in their different ways – crucial to the story. Nagler regards the death of the suitors as a ‘grim inversion’ of the death of Odysseus' crew. Odysseus himself is depicted both by the primary narrator and in his own narrative in Od. 9–12 as making every effort to save his crew, all in vain. By contrast, he is the prime and highly effective instigator of the death of the suitors.Footnote 3
This note argues that the thematic connection between the companions and the suitors is reflected in a particular simile marking the narratives of their last hour. Both (a number of) the companions and the suitors die like fish. But that does not exhaust the relevance of the parallel: between these two episodes of fish-death, Odysseus himself changes from a helpless onlooker to the fisherman himself. Thus these similes support the main storyline of the Odyssey: Odysseus' transformation from the destitute Nobody of the Cyclops' cave to the ‘father, king, and saviour’ who ultimately triumphs on Ithaca.
When Odysseus and his men have to find their way between Scylla and Charybdis, six of the men pay with their lives as the monstrous Scylla catches them. Odysseus had been warned about this horrifying beast by Circe (12.73–100), who had graphically described the monster's fishing habits (12.95–100; esp. ἰχθυάᾳ, 95): it would catch dolphins,Footnote 4 seals, and even any bigger sea creature (κῆτος, 96) that it might lay hands (or rather, devouring mouth) on. Circe predicts that each of the six heads will carry off one of Odysseus' companions.
When Odysseus travels on and reaches Scylla's habitat (12.234–59), her strike is so sudden that, in spite of his having been on the lookout, the first thing Odysseus notices is the arms and legs of six of his men, flailing high in the air. They scream out for his help, to no avail. At this point in his narrative, Odysseus inserts a striking simile, which takes up Circe's earlier description of Scylla as a ‘fisherman’ (Od. 12.251–5):
And as a fisherman on a jutting rock, when he casts in his bait as a snare to the little fishes, with his long pole lets down into the sea the horn of a field-dwelling ox, and then as he catches a fish flings it writhing ashore, even so were they drawn writhing up towards the cliffs.Footnote 5
The primary point of comparison in this simile is the writhing and flailing movements of men and fish. The men are whisked away from the relative safety of their boat and pulled on shore (in this case the rocks), like fish being jerked out of the water. De Jong points out that usually the fish in these similes connote helplessness and a lack of heroism (ad Od. 22.381–9, on which see below).Footnote 6 But the narrative is also invested in emphasizing Odysseus' helplessness and lack of control: although he had donned full armour (12.228) and was straining his eyes to detect Scylla (12.232–3),Footnote 7 it was already too late by the time he finally noticed something. There is great pathos in the scene. His comrades call out for his help, calling him by name (ἐμὲ δὲ ϕθέγγοντο καλεῦντες | ἐξονομακλήδην, 12.249–50), and in 12.257 the men pathetically stretch out their hands to Odysseus (ἐμοί) as they are being devoured. Odysseus comments that this was the most painful spectacle during all his travails (οἴκτιστον δὴ κεῖνο ἐμοῖς ἴδον ὀϕθαλμοῖσι | πάντων ὅσσ' ἐμόγησα, 12.258–9): there is nothing he can do. This is entirely in line with the fact that the simile simply has no role for anyone apart from fisherman and fish, predator and victim: it does not script a saviour. Finally, we must note that this simile is part of Odysseus' narrative and that he is the one focalizing the scene, as is also clear from 258–9: we are seeing the scene of his men dying like fish through his eyes.Footnote 8
Fish similes are not frequent in the Iliad and Odyssey.Footnote 9 But there is an extended one at a highly significant point in the story. It is part of the μνηστηροϕονία, the episode in which the suitors are killed, where it is applied to the dead suitors (Od. 22.383–8):
But he found them one and all fallen in the blood and dust – all the host of them, like fishes that fishermen have drawn forth in the meshes of their net from the gray sea upon the curving beach, and they all lie heaped up on the sand, longing for the waves of the sea, and the bright sun takes away their life; even so now the suitors lay heaped upon each other.
This time the point of comparison is how the suitors are sprawled out and piled on top of each other in death. Although, unlike in the Scylla story, we are now strictly in the domain of the primary narrator, it is again Odysseus who is focalizing the simile. We see the scene through Odysseus' eyes (he is casting around a searching glance to check for any suitors who may have escaped [πάπτηνεν, 22.381]),Footnote 10 and this is what he sees (τοὺς δ' ἴδεν, 22.383). His un-heroic opponents (so, rightly, de Jong, ad loc.) are sprawled out, a dead or at the very least moribund catch rather than the refugees he was originally looking out for. The fact that the fish are said to ‘long for the waves of the sea’ (22.387), the safe environment from which they were so brusquely removed, adds extraordinary pathos as all commentators have observed, but it also suggests that the suitors, although clearly no longer in a position to get away, may not all have been quite dead instantly, but were dying a miserable death.Footnote 11
The role of Helios in the last line of the simile is also significant and brings back memories of Odysseus' crew: whereas Helios was instrumental in bringing about the death of Odysseus' men after they slaughtered his cattle, Odysseus sees him as the bringer of death again here, this time for the suitors, and this time in support of Odysseus rather than in an adversarial role.Footnote 12 A more disturbing aspect to the parallel is that Odysseus himself is here cast in the role of the cold-blooded killer that was once fulfilled by Scylla. Once again, this suggests that we are far removed from the combat of heroes.
The two fish similes may be another case in point, then, for a representational connection between suitors and companions. But my second point about these similes is far more important: their role in supporting the main storyline in the Odyssey. Whereas the Scylla scene highlighted not only the helplessness of Odysseus' men but also, and importantly, Odysseus' own total lack of control (as befits this part of the story, Odysseus' wanderings and the loss of all his men), the opposite is the case in the μνηστηροϕονία scene. The king of the house is back (cf. ἑὸν δόμον, 22.381) and, rather than being the helpless witness to a fishing predator, he is reinstated here as the leader of the fishermen (ἁλιῆες, 22.384) himself, who oversees the results of what he has done and proceeds to issue commands to deal with the situation.
When at his request Eurycleia is brought to the scene, he seems to her like a lion, covered in blood after a gory meal (22.402–6) – this lion simile, too, can be, and indeed has been, put into a progression of similes characteristic for the Odyssey Footnote 13 and supporting the storyline.Footnote 14 We can now add our fish similes to such uses of similes in support of the construction of the story: companions and suitors both fall victim to a fisherman (though with different fishing techniques),Footnote 15 but Odysseus himself undergoes a metamorphosis from helpless bystander as his men become the victims of a murderous angler, to a fisherman in his own right, dealing with those who prey on his house. In his hands, they are reduced to the un-heroic victims of an overwhelming, not to say monstrous, power.
