Protée (mythology)

Myth

No mention was made with its ascent until more recent mythographes give him Poséidon (or Océan according to the authors) like father and Téthys like mother.

However, certain nonHomeric traditions of the Trojan War (represented in particular by Hérodote or Euripide) make of Protée an Egyptian king and give him as remains the island of Pharos, close to the mouth of the the Nile. On Pharos, it accommodated in particular Dionysos in the wanderings of the young god. According to this assumption, its name could be only the transcription of Prouïti , “the Sublime Door” (one of the epithets of the Pharaon S).

According to Philostrate (IV, 16), the phantom of Achille would have declared with Apollonius de Tyane, comes to honor its tomb and to ask him some questions in particular in connection with the real presence of Helene at the time of the seat: “For a long time, we were misled, at the point to send embassies to the Troyens and to fight because of it, as if it had been in Ilion, whereas it in Egypt and in the house of Protée, where it lived had involved Pâris. And, when the thing was known, we continued to fight for the possession of Troy itself, in order not to withdraw us dishonoured”.

Not only, it knew all passed and the present, but still, it had the capacity to predict the future. And in spite of this gift, it took care well not to share its knowledge easily. To consult it, it had to be captured by surprised during its nap of midday because, at this time, it gained the hollow caves in company of the seals to shelter heats of the day. And even captured, it could still take all the physical shapes which it wanted in order to escape.

In the Odyssey , Ménélas tells with Télémaque that it was encalminé there on the way of the return to Sparte after the Trojan War. The girl of Protée revealed to him how to force her father to say to him which gods it had offended and how it could be repurchased to return at his place. It hid among the seals of Protée and when this one emerged from the sea to sleep among them, Ménélas managed to capture it. In order to escape its attacker, Protée took in turn the shape of a lion, a snake, a leopard, a pig and even of water and of a tree. But these metamorphoses were vain and it had to answer the questions of Ménélas. This last learned thus that his/her brother Agamemnon had been killed on his return at his place, than Ajax Small the had died in a shipwreck and than Ulysses had failed on the island of Calypso.

Another history tells that one day, the Abeille S of Aristée, wire of Apollon, were all died of a disease brought by the Dryades. Aristée required help of Cyrène, his/her mother. This one says to him that Protée could teach him how to avoid another disaster of the kind, but only if it were forced by it. Aristée was to immobilize the god it does not matter the form which it would take. Thus, Protée had to inform it that it was to sacrifice a bull to the gods, to leave the carcass on the spot of the sacrifice and to go back there after three days. When Aristée returned to this place, it found a swarm of bees in the carcass and brought back it in its apiary. The bees knew the disease never again.

Protée had several children. According to Homère, that which carried help in Ménélas named Idothée. Apollodore mentions Polygonos and Télégonos, which defied Héraclès with Torone and which was killed. Moreover, according to Philostrate (I, 4), the mother of Apollonios de Tyane had the vision of Protée in dream, which announced a birth to him. When she asked him what she would be confined, the Old man of the sea answered simply: “Of me”.

The tragedy Helene of Euripide mentions Protée, a king of Egypt which married the Néréide Psamathée, although the majority of the traditions gave to the latter the king Éaque like husband. In this tragedy, the character Théoclymémos was the son of this king and another passage suggests the existence of a girl, Ido. Protée, which one does not see either, approaches well little the “Old man of the Sea”.

Etymological posterity

Although sharing faculty to change form to the envi with others marine Greek Divinities, the name of Protée was used as Latin radical in - and from there in the majority of the other European languages - to form terms like protean , with this connotation of “spontaneous polymorphism”.

And when one started to discover a certain number of very large organic molecules who had, with identical chemical composition , the possibility of folding up in forms very different from/to each other (see Blue obstructs), one extremely logically gave them the name of Protéine S. In the same way, the enterobactery Proteus mirabilis responsible for urinary infections at the man owes his name to the Protée god because its aspect in optical microscopy is very polymorphic.

Sources

(II, 5,9).
(v. 36-7).
(II, 110-112, 114-117 and 121).
(IV, 349-570).
(I, 367-378), (II, 9; VIII, 731; XI, 221-224 and 255; XIII, 918).
Philostrate, Life of Apollonius de Tyane (I, 4; IV, 16).
(IV, 387-529).

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