at Pharos in Egypt, from Proteus, "the old man of the sea"—
"Who knows all secret things in ocean pent."
The knowledge had to be forced from him by stratagem. Proteus was in the habit of coming up out of the sea at mid-day to sleep under the shadow of the rocks, with his flock of seals about him. Instructed by his daughter Eidothea—who had taken pity on the wanderers—Menelaus and some of his comrades had disguised themselves in seal-skins[1] (though much disturbed, as he confesses, by the "very ancient and fish-like smell"), and had seized the ancient sea-god as he lay asleep on the shore. Proteus, like the genie in the Arabian tale, changed himself rapidly into all manner of terrible forms; but Menelaus held him fast until he was obliged to resume his own, when, confessing himself vanquished by the mortal, the god proceeded in recompense to answer his questions as to his own fate, and that of his companion chiefs, the wanderers on their way home from Troy. The transformations of Proteus have much exercised the ingenuity of the allegorists. The pliancy of such principles of interpretation becomes amusingly evident, when one authority explains to us that here are symbolised the wiles
- ↑ The Esquimaux adopt the very same stratagem in order to get near the seals. "Sir Edward Beecher, in a dissertation on Escmimaux habits read before the British Association, told a story, that he was once levelling his rifle at a supposed seal, when a shipmate's well-known voice from within the hide arrested his aim with the words, 'Don't shoot—it's Husky, sir!'"—Hayman's Odyssey, app. xliii.
