![]() Proteus then answered truthfully, further informing Menelaus that his brother Agamemnon had been murdered on his return home, that Ajax the Lesser had been shipwrecked and killed, and that Odysseus was stranded on Calypso's Isle.Īnother story tells that at one time the bees of Aristaeus, son of Apollo, all died of a disease. ![]() Proteus emerged from the sea to sleep among his colony of seals, but Menelaus was successful at holding him, though Proteus took the forms of a lion, a serpent, a leopard, a pig, even of water and a tree. He learned from Proteus' daughter that if he could capture her father he could force him to reveal which of the gods he had offended, and how he could propitiate them and return home. In the Odyssey, Menelaus relates to Telemachus that he had been becalmed here on his journey home from the Trojan War. (The same island much later became the site of the lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the seven Wonders of the World, but that belongs to History.) From this Proteus comes the adjective protean, with the general meaning of "versatile", "mutable", "capable of assuming many forms."Īccording to Homer (Odyssey 4:412), the sandy island of Pharos situated off the coast of the Nile Delta was the home of Proteus, the oracular Old Man of the Sea and herdsman of the sea-beasts.Īt Pharos he welcomed Dionysus in the young god's wanderings. He can foretell the future, but will change his shape to avoid having to he will only answer to someone who is capable of capturing him. ![]() ![]() No mention is made of his parents, until for later mythographers he became the son of Poseidon in the Olympian theogony, or of Oceanus and a Naiad. In Greek mythology, Proteus is an early sea-god, one of several deities whom Homer calls the "Old Man of the Sea," whose name suggests the "first," as protogonos is the "firstborn." He was the herdsman of Poseidon's seals and was associated with the island of Lemnos. Proteus ancient sea-god with the power of prophecy and shape-shifting. ![]()
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