PROTEUS  , in

Greek mythology, a prophetic old man of the sea . According to Homer, his resting-place was the island of Pharos, near the mouth of the Nile; in Virgil his home is the island of Carpathus, between Crete and Rhodes . He knew all things past, present and future, but was loth to tell what he knew . Those who would consult him had first to surprise and bind him during his noonday slumber in a cave by the sea, where he was wont to pass the heat of the day surrounded by his seals . Even when caught he would try to escape by assuming all sorts of shapes: now he was a lion, now a serpent, a leopard, a boar, a tree, fire, water . But if his captor held him fast the god at last returned to his proper shape, gave the wished-for answer, and then plunged into the sea . He was subject to Poseidon, and acted as shepherd to his " flocks." In post-Homeric times the story ran that Proteus was the son of Poseidon and a king of Egypt, to whose court Helen was taken by Hermes after she had been carried off, Paris being accompanied to' Troy by a phantom substituted for her . This is the story followed by Herodotus (ii . 112, 118), who got it from Egyptian priests, and by Euripides in the Helena . From his power of assuming what-ever shape he pleased Proteus came to be regarded, especially by the Orphic mystics, as a symbol of the original matter from which the world was created . Rather he is typical of the ever-changing aspect of the sea (Homer, Odyssey, iv . 351; Virgil, Georgics, iv .

386) .