Odyssey 4.460 · Book 4, lines 460–463
Which god taught you this?
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ἀλλʼ ὅτε δή ῥʼ ἀνίαζʼ ὁ γέρων ὀλοφώια εἰδώς, καὶ τότε δή μʼ ἐπέεσσιν ἀνειρόμενος προσέειπε·
Proteus — τίς νύ τοι, Ἀτρέος υἱέ, θεῶν συμφράσσατο βουλάς, ὄφρα μʼ ἕλοις ἀέκοντα λοχησάμενος; τέο σε χρή;
But when at last the old man grew weary, skilled in baleful arts, then he questioned me and spoke these words: ‘Which of the gods, son of Atreus, helped you devise this plan, to catch me in an ambush against my will? What is your need?’
Word by word
The setting
Worn out at last and back in his own form, Proteus gives up and speaks. His first words are not surrender but a question: who has betrayed him — which god showed Menelaus how to trap the Old Man of the Sea?
A note on this passage
The struggle ends the only way it can — the god tires first. Back in his own shape, Proteus concedes by speaking, and his opening words are not a yielding but a question: who told you? He assumes, rightly, that no mortal could have contrived this alone; a god must have coached Menelaus in the one method that works.
The detail worth holding is ὀλοφώια εἰδώς, ‘knowing baleful arts’ — the narrator's tag for Proteus at the very moment he loses. His knowledge is exactly what Menelaus has come to steal, and the ambush inverts the usual order: here the trickster is tricked, the all-knowing sea-god caught by a plan he did not foresee. His question quietly credits the daughter, Eidothea, who sold out her own father to the stranded Greeks.
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