Odyssey 4.382 · Book 4, lines 382–386
The unerring Old Man of the Sea
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ὣς ἐφάμην, ἡ δʼ αὐτίκʼ ἀμείβετο δῖα θεάων·
Eidothea — τοιγὰρ ἐγώ τοι, ξεῖνε, μάλʼ ἀτρεκέως ἀγορεύσω. πωλεῖταί τις δεῦρο γέρων ἅλιος νημερτὴς ἀθάνατος Πρωτεὺς Αἰγύπτιος, ὅς τε θαλάσσης πάσης βένθεα οἶδε, Ποσειδάωνος ὑποδμώς·
So I spoke, and at once she answered, shining among goddesses: Then I will tell you, stranger, quite exactly. There comes here a certain unerring Old Man of the Sea, immortal Proteus of Egypt, who knows the depths of all the sea, Poseidon's underling.
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The goddess agrees to help and names the one who holds the answer: Proteus, the immortal Egyptian sea-god who knows the depths of all the ocean and serves Poseidon.
A note on this passage
The goddess drops the scolding and turns straight to business, promising to tell him everything, and exactly. Then she names the source: Proteus, an immortal, unerring Old Man of the Sea who knows the whole ocean's depths and answers to Poseidon. The stack of epithets builds him as a perfect oracle — a being who cannot be wrong.
The irony sits in that title, νημερτής, 'unerring.' The god who cannot speak falsely is also the god who cannot be pinned: Proteus will answer truly only if he is first held fast through every shape he takes. Homer sets up the paradox that drives the scene — infallible knowledge exists, but it lives inside a creature designed to slip away, and Menelaus will have to wrestle the truth out of him.
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