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In keeping with one of his themes in Helen, Euripides mentions in passing Eido ("image"), a daughter of the king and therefore sister of Theoclymenus who underwent a name-change after her adolescence and became "Theonoë," "god-minded," since she was as it turned out capable of foreseeing the future-as such, she is a prophet who appears as a crucial character in the play. The often unconventional playwright introduces a "real" Helen and a "phantom" Helen (who caused the Trojan War), and gives a backstory that makes the father of his character Theoclymenus, Proteus, a king in Egypt who had been wed to a Nereid Psamathe. Proteus of Egypt is mentioned in an alternative version of the story of Helen of Troy in the tragedy Helen of Euripides (produced in 412 BC).
![proteus god proteus god](https://www.theoi.com/image/P11.4Nereus_sm.jpg)
In the Odyssey (iv.430ff) Menelaus wrestles with "Proteus of Egypt, the immortal old man of the sea who never lies, who sounds the deep in all its depths, Poseidon's servant" ( Robert Fagles's translation). These legends are mentioned in the 3rd century biographical work Life of Apollonius of Tyana. There are also legends concerning Apollonius of Tyana that say Proteus incarnated himself as the 1st century philosopher. The bees were never again troubled by disease. He followed these instructions, and upon returning, he found in one of the carcasses a swarm of bees which he took to his apiary. To make amends, Aristaeus needed to sacrifice 12 animals to the gods, leave the carcasses in the place of sacrifice, and return three days later. Aristaeus did so, and Proteus eventually gave up and told him that the bees' death was a punishment for causing the death of Eurydice. Aristaeus had to seize Proteus and hold him, no matter what he would change into.
#Proteus god how to
Aristaeus went to his mother, Cyrene, for help she told him that Proteus could tell him how to prevent another such disaster, but would do so only if compelled. 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 Ogygia.Īccording to Virgil in the fourth Georgic, 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 in holding him, though Proteus took the forms of a lion, a serpent, a leopard, a pig, even of water or a tree. He learned from Proteus' daughter Eidothea ("the very image of the Goddess"), 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. Mythology Proteus, prophetic sea-god Īccording to Homer ( Odyssey iv: 355), 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. Three daughters, Rhoiteia gave her name to the city of Rhoiteion in Troad, Thebe became the eponym of Thebes in Egypt and Thaicrucia, mother of Nympheus by Zeus. Cabeiro, mother of the Cabeiri and the three Cabeirian nymphs by Hephaestus, was also called the daughter of Proteus. By the Nereid Psamathe, Proteus fathered Theoclymenos and Theonoe ( Eidothea or Eurynome ). Another son of Proteus, Eioneus, became the father of Dymas, king of Phrygia. They both challenged Heracles at the behest of Hera and were killed by the hero. The children of Proteus by his sister-wife Torone of Phlegra were Polygonus ( Tmolus) and Telegonus. Proteus was generally regarded as the son of the sea-god Poseidon and Phoenice, a daughter of King Phoenix of Phoenicia. The first attestation of the name, although it is not certain whether it refers to the god or just a person, is in Mycenaean Greek the attested form, in Linear B, is ????, po-ro-te-u. It is not certain to what this refers, but in myths where he is the son of Poseidon, it possibly refers to his being Poseidon's eldest son, older than Poseidon's other son, the sea-god Triton.
![proteus god proteus god](https://images.fineartamerica.com/images/artworkimages/mediumlarge/3/the-sea-god-proteus-leaning-against-a-water-jug-from-which-fish-flow-in-the-background-a-port-city-philip-galle.jpg)
Proteus' name suggests the "first" (from Greek "πρῶτος" prōtos, "first"), as prōtogonos (πρωτόγονος) is the "primordial" or the "firstborn".