Proteus' Seals, Odysseus, and Poseidon

Bruce Louden (University of Texas, El Paso)

Detienne and Vernant's Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society is a seminal work which single-handedly established metis as a central concern in studies of the Odyssey, and produced highly original analyses of Athena and Hephaistos.  Nonetheless, some of their contentions do not hold up to scrutiny.  Is Proteus really a "god of great cunning" as they assert (20, 111, 113), if Menelaus, hardly known for his shrewdness, can defeat him?  Other commentators have established how Menelaus' encounter with Proteus serves larger thematic concerns, prefiguring Odysseus' encounter with Teiresias, and other episodes.  If we combine this thematic view with Detienne and Vernant's observation about seals we uncover a surprisng thematic nexus.  Menelaus, disguised as a seal, wrestling Proteus is a metaphor for Odysseus' interactions with Poseidon.

As Detienne and Vernant note (262), "the seal was a mediator between the dry and the wet, bringing together the elements of sea and land."  The seals' domain, the amphibious space beetween the land and the sea, is the area that Odysseus largely inhabits from books 5-13.  As they further note (263-64), seals have a certain resemblance to humans (Aristotle, Historia Animalium), a resemblance acted out when Menelaus and his men are able to pass themselves off as seals before Proteus.  Menelaus "becomes" a seal (4.436-53) to wrestle Proteus.  Odysseus spends much of book 5, just after encountering Poseidon, swimming along Skheria's shore (5.374-462).  The sight of him naked, brine-encrusted, makes Nausikaa's handmaids scatter across the seashore.  Menelaus literally wrestles with Proteus; Odysseus is thematically a wrestler in Homeric epic, as when he wrestles Philomeleides of Lesbos (4.342-44), which reference serves as segue into the Proteus story.

Teiresias' mysterious phrase, ex halos (11.134), of a "gentle death" that will overtake Odysseus in old age, ties all these elements together.  Though commentators insist the phrase must mean away from the sea, all other occurrences of the formula in the Odyssey and the Iliad suggest a very different interpretation.  The formula occurs three times in Menelaus' encounter with Proteus: as the god first emerges from the ocean (4.401), as he emerges when Menelaus wrestles him (4.450), to describe the seals emerging from the sea under Proteus' direction (4.448).  In the Iliad ex halos is used exclusively of Poseidon as he emerges from the sea (13.15, 13.44, 20.14).  As Odysseus approaches Skheria in the aftermath of storms Poseidon provoked, he fears the sea god will cause a sea monster to come out of the sea (ex halos: 5.422) and harass him.  Given that all other occurrences of the formula depict either a sea deity (Poseidon, Proteus, Thetis: Od. 24.47, 55) or sea creature (selas, sea monster) in the act of emerging from the sea, the usual interpretation that ex halos in Teiresias' prophecy means "away from" the sea is not tenable.  Since all Iliad occurrences refer to Poseidon, and three in the Odyssey refer to Menelaus wrestling with Proteus, it is likelier that Teiresias' phrase points to Poseidon's involvement in Odysseus' death "from the sea."  Though Odysseus leaves the sea behind in the middle of book 13, Poseidon has not fully relinquished his wrath.