Proteus

Family: mythic figures · Role: shape-shifting sea deity · First appears: Fable 75

Life events

• Acheloüs recounts Proteus repeatedly changing into human, animal, mineral, plant, water, and fire forms.(Fable75)
  • With: Theseus Acheloüs
  • “For people have seen thee one while a young man, and again a lion; at one time thou wast a furious boar, at another a serpent, which they dreaded to touch; {and} sometimes, horns rendered thee a bull. Ofttimes thou mightst be seen as a stone; often, too, as a tree. Sometimes imitating the appearance of flowing water, thou wast a river; sometimes fire, the {very} contrary of water.”

Fable 75

• with Acheloüs (Acheloüs addresses Proteus while describing his transformations.) “There are some whose privilege it is to pass into many shapes, as thou, Proteus, inhabitant of the sea that embraces the earth.”

Fable 101

• with Glaucus (Glaucus identifies himself and Proteus as Gods of the waters and rulers of the deep.) “I am a God of the waters: nor have Proteus, and Triton, and Palæmon, the son of Athamas, a more uncontrolled reign over the deep.”

Also listed in Other Figures — Minor Figures

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Extracted from the original text of The Metamorphoses of Ovid. Made with Rho MD.