Note 180 — Chapter II · HOMER—METHODS OF FISHING

In Victor Bérard’s Les Phéniciens et l’Odyssée (Paris, 1903), vol. ii. p. 64 ff. (a work, compact of knowledge and of both classical and modern research, which tracks characters and episodes in Homer to and compares them with Egyptian and Phœnician accounts), is found a very interesting dissertation on Proteus, the guardian of the seals of Poseidon and foreteller of the future (Od., IV.). Bérard holds that the name was simply a Greek form of the Egyptian word Prouiti, or Prouti, which was one of the ascriptions or titles of the kings of Egypt, as to whose knowledge of or association with magicians (who, like Proteus, were capable of transforming themselves or other objects) he cites alike Maspero and the Old Testament. See, however, for other possibilities, P. Weizsäcker in Roscher, Lex. Myth., iii. 3172-3178, who concludes that for us, as for Menelaos or Aristaios, Proteus the shape-shifter is still a very slippery customer.