Proteus

The 'Old Man of the Sea', a prophetic sea-god subject of Poseidon who herded a flock of seals on the island of Pharos off the Egyptian coast and could foretell what was, what is, and what would be — but only to one who could pin him down through his successive transformations into lion, snake, leopard, boar, running water, and tall tree. Trapped at noon among his seals by Menelaus on the advice of his daughter Eidothea, Proteus revealed the death of Ajax the Locrian on the rocks of Gyrae, the murder of Agamemnon at Mycenae, and the survival of Odysseus weeping on Calypso's island — the news that the Telemachy carries home from Sparta to Ithaca. Virgil gives him a doublet on the island of Carpathos, where he reveals to Aristaeus the cause of his lost bees.

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