Proteus left the flood of the Isthmian sea of Pallene, and armed him in a cuirass of the brine, the sealskin. Round him in a ring rushed the swarthy Indians at the summons of Bacchos, and crowds of the woollyheaded men embraced the shepherd of the seals in his various forms. For in their grasp the Old Man Proteus took on changing shapes, weaving his limbs into many mimic images. He spotted his body into a dappleback panther. He made his limbs a tree, and stood straight up on the earth a selfgrown spire, shaking his leaves and whistling a counterfeit whisper to the North Wind. He scored his back well with painted scales and crawled as a serpent ; he rose in coils squeezing his belly, and with a dancing throb of his curling tail’s tip he twirled about, lifted his head and spat hissing from gaping throat and grinning jaws a shooting shower of poison. So from one shadowy shape to another in changeling form he bristled as a lion, charged as a boar, flowed as water — the Indian company clutched the wet flood in threatening grasp, but found the pretended water slipping through their hands. So the crafty Old Man changed into many and varied shapes, as many as the varied shapes of Periclymenos, whom Heracles slew when between two fingers he crushed the counterfeit shape of a bastard bee. Flocks of sea-monsters ringed round the Old Man on his expedition to dry land, water splashed with a heavy roar from the open mouths of the sand-loving seals.
Ancient Nereus armed himself with a watery spear, and led his regiment of daughters into the Euian struggle. With sea-traversing trident he leapt at the elephants, terrible to behold : many a neighbouring cliff along the shore toppled sideways under the seapike of Nereus. The tribes of Nereids sounded for their sire the cry of battle-triumph : unshod, half hidden in the brine, the company rushed raging to combat over the sea. Restless Ino speeding unarmed into strife with the Satyrs, fell again into her old madness spitting white foam from her maddened lips. Terrible Panopeia also shot through the quiet water flogging the greeny back of a sealioness. Galateia too the sea-nymph lifting the club of her lovesick Polyphemos attacked a wild Bacchant. Eido rode unshaken, unwetted, over the water mounted on the back of a seabred pilot fish.
“As a driver in the circus rounding the post with skill, turns about the near horse to hug the post and lets the off horse follow along on a slackened rein, goading him on and yelling horse-lashing threats — he stoops and crouches, resting his knees on the rail, and leans to the side : as he drives a willing horse with the sparing hand of a master, and a little touch of the whip, as he turns his face casting an eye behind while he watches the car of the driver behind — so then the Nereids drove their fishes like swift-moving horses about the watery goal of their contest. Another opposite handling her reins on a dolphin’s back peeped out over the water, and moved on her seaborne course as she rode down the quiet sea on the fish in a wild race over the waters ; then the mad dolphin travelling in the sea half- visible cut through his fellow-dolphins .
The Rivers came roaring into the battle with Dionysos, encouraging their lord, and Oceanos gaped a watery bellow from his everflowing throat while Poseidon’s trumpet sounded to tell of the coming strife ; the deeps rounded into a swell rallying to the Trident. Myrtoan hurried up to Icarian, Sardinian came near Hesperian, Iberian with swelling waves rolled along to Celtic ; Bosporos never still mingled his curving stream with both his familiar seas ; the deeps of the Ionian Sea rolling with the stormwind beat together upon the streams of Aegean, and the wild Adriatic brine rose high as the clouds and in towering waves beat on the feet of the raging Sicilian. Libyan Nereus caught up his conch under the water by Syrtis, and boomed on his sea-trumpet. Then one rising from the surge and stepping on land rested his left foot on a rock, and with right broke off the top of the cliff with earthshaking tread and hurled it at a Mainad’s inviolate head ; and Melicertes lunging at Dionysos with his trident of the sea went madly along in leaps like his mother’s.
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