PHAROS (region)
- Kind of place
- Region
Off Egypt, about as far as a ship can sail in a day with a good wind behind her, lies the island of Pharos, with a good harbour where ships take in water before putting out to the open sea; there the gods becalmed Menelaus for twenty days. Odyssey 4 ¶29 At midday the old man of the sea comes up from under the waves, heralded by the West wind, and lies down to sleep in a great sea cave; his seals come up from the grey sea in shoals and sleep all round him, and he counts them first like a shepherd counting sheep. Odyssey 4 ¶34 Proteus, the old immortal of the sea, Poseidon's servant who knows all the depths, lives under the sea by Pharos; his daughter Idothea told Menelaus how to catch him. Odyssey 4 ¶32
Described in the sources
Idothea brought four freshly flayed seal skins up from the bottom of the sea and dug pits in the sand of the shore, where Menelaus and three companions lay hidden under the skins until Proteus came up at noon and counted them among his seals; seized, he became a lion, a serpent, a leopard, a boar, running water and a tree before he would speak. Odyssey 4 ¶37 +1 In Euripides' telling Proteus was a mortal king who lived on the island of Pharos as lord of Egypt, married the sea-nymph Psamathe, and was buried there. Euripides, Helen 1-30