According to Homer, the sandy island of Pharos positioned off the coastline of the Nile Delta was the house of Proteus, the oracular Aged Male of the Sea and herdsman of the sea-beasts. In the Odyssey, Menelaus relates to Telemachus that he had been becalmed listed here on his journey household from the Trojan War. He discovered from Proteus' daughter, Eidothea, that if he could capture her father he could power him to reveal which of the gods he had offended, and how he could propitiate them and return house. Proteus emerged from the sea to rest amid his colony of seals, but Menelaus was effective in keeping him, while Proteus took the sorts of a lion, a serpent, a leopard, a pig, even of water or a tree. Proteus then answered in truth, further more informing Menelaus that his brother Agamemnon had been murdered on his return household, that Ajax the Lower had been shipwrecked and killed, and that Odysseus was stranded on Calypso's Isle Ogygia. In accordance to Virgil in the fourth Georgic, at just one time the bees of Aristaeus, son of Apollo, all died of a illness. Aristaeus went to his mother, Cyrene, for support she informed him that Proteus could explain to him how to avoid one other these types of disaster, but would do so only if compelled. Aristaeus had to seize Proteus and hold him, no matter what he would change into. When Aristaeus returned just after the 3 days he noticed in just one of the carcasses a swarm of bees, which he took to his apiary. The bees have been certainly not once again troubled by disorder.