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In Greek mythology, Proteus (Πρωτεύς) is an early sea-god, one of several deities whom Homer calls the "Old Man of the Sea",[1] whose name suggests the "first" (from Greek "πρῶτος" - protos, "first"), as protogonos (πρωτόγονος) is the "primordial" or the "firstborn". He became the son of Poseidon in the Olympian theogony (Odyssey iv. 432), or of Nereus and Doris, or of Oceanus and a Naiad, and was made the herdsman of Poseidon's seals, the great bull seal at the center of the harem. He can foretell the future, but, in a mytheme familiar from several cultures, will change his shape to avoid having to; he will answer only to someone who is capable of capturing him. From this feature of Proteus comes the adjective protean, with the general meaning of "versatile", "mutable", "capable of assuming many forms". "Protean" has positive connotations of flexibility, versatility and adaptability. The earliest attested form of the name is the Mycenaean Greek 𐀡𐀫𐀳𐀄 po-ro-te-u, written in Linear B syllabic script.[2]
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According to Homer (Odyssey iv: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. In the Odyssey, Menelaus relates to Telemachus that he had been becalmed here on his journey home from the Trojan War. 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. 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. 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.
According to Virgil in the fourth Georgic, at one time the bees of Aristaeus, son of Apollo, all died of a disease. 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. Aristaeus had to seize Proteus and hold him, no matter what he would change into. Aristeus did so, and Proteus eventually gave up and told him to sacrifice 12 animals to the gods, leave the corpses in the place of sacrifice, and return three days later. When Aristaeus returned after the three days he found in one of the carcasses a swarm of bees, which he took to his apiary. The bees were never again troubled by disease.
The children of Proteus, besides Eidothea, include Polygonus and Telegonus, who both challenged Heracles and were killed, one of Heracles' many successful encounters with representatives of the pre-Olympian world order.
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). Proteus of Egypt is mentioned in an alternate version of the story of Helen of Troy in the tragedy Helen of Euripides (produced in 412 BC). 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. In keeping with one of his themes in Helen, Euripides mentions in passing Eido ("image"), another unseen daughter of the king. The play's king (never seen) is only marginally related to the "Old Man of the Sea"[3] and should not be confused with the sea god Proteus.
At Pharos—in Hellenistic times the site of the Lighthouse of Alexandria, (in modern Greek the word still has the meaning "lighthouse)—a king of Egypt named Proteus welcomed Dionysus in the young god's wanderings.
A further Proteus occurs in Greek myth, as one of the fifty sons of King Aegyptus.
Many organisms in biology take their name from Proteus. These include:
From his transforming nature, and multifarious aspects comes our adjective "protean". A "protean career" would embrace many human concerns. For example, Leonardo da Vinci was a painter, sculptor, scientist and designer of fortifications: his career was "protean".
Proteus syndrome is the name given to the deforming disease that may have afflicted Joseph Merrick, "The Elephant Man". Although difficult to differentiate from severe neurofibromatosis, there have been about 100 cases of Proteus syndrome over the last few decades.
The Proteus phenomenon is a bias observed in scientific publications where controversial studies, i.e. studies whose findings are in extreme contradiction with another study, are more likely to be published early.[4]
The German mystical alchemist Heinrich Khunrath (1560–1605) wrote of the shape-changing sea-god who, because of his relationship to the sea, is both a symbol of the unconscious as well as the perfection of the art. Alluding to the scintilla, the spark from ‘the light of nature’ and symbol of the anima mundi", Khunrath in Gnostic vein stated of the Protean element Mercury
our Catholick Mercury, by virtue of his universal fiery spark of the light of nature, is beyond doubt Proteus, the sea god of the ancient pagan sages, who hath the key to the sea and …power over all things. Von Hyleanischen Chaos| in Carl Jung, vol. 14:50
The poet John Milton was also aware of the association of Proteus with the Hermetic art of alchemy. In Paradise Lost (III.603–06) he wrote of the alchemists who sought the philosopher's stone
In his discourse The Garden of Cyrus (1658) Milton's contemporary Sir Thomas Browne, pursuing the figure of the quincunx, queried
Why Proteus in Homer the Symbole of the first matter, before he settled himself in the midst of his Sea-Monsters, doth place them out by fives?
Shakespeare uses the image of Proteus to establish the character of his great royal villain Richard III in the play Henry VI, Part Three, the prequel to his play Richard III. In Act III, Scene ii, Richard (not yet the king), boasts:
Shakespeare also names one of the main characters of his play The Two Gentlemen of Verona Proteus. This character is inconstant in his affections. In the finale of the play when his deceptions have been unraveled and he is face to face with his friend Valentine and original love Julia, Proteus says:
In 1807, William Wordsworth finished his sonnet on the theme of a modernity deadened to Nature, which opens "The world is too much with us", with a sense of nostalgia for the lost richness of a world numinous with deities:
In modern times, the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung defined the mythological figure of Proteus as a personification of the unconscious, who, because of his gift of prophecy and shape-changing has much in common with the central but elusive figure of alchemy, Mercurius.
Proteus is the name of the submarine in the original story by Otto Klement and Jay Lewis Bixby that was made into a movie, Fantastic Voyage, and a book by Isaac Asimov. Both came out in 1966.
John Barth's novelette "Menelaiad" in Lost in the Funhouse is build around a battle between Proteus and Menelaus. It is told as a multiply-nested frame tale, and the narrators bleed into each other as the battle undermines their identities.
The alien character of Prot in the book trilogy by Gene Brewer and played by Kevin Spacey in the movie K-PAX, like Proteus was said to embody, was a modernized "shape shifter" and magical type of advanced mystical ET who "walked in" to humanoid bodies, and shared wisdom and insights into the human condition.