As mentioned by monroe22, Proteus was a shapeshifter:
"Proteus was a minor sea-deity, who, like Nereus, was often called the
Old Man of the Sea. His dwelling place was the depths of the sea,
which he only left for the purpose of taking sea-calves of Poseidon to
graze on the coast and islands of the Mediterranean. Being an aged
man, he was looked on as possessed of prophetic power and the secrets
of witchcraft. Proteus would not be persuaded to exercise this power
except by deceit or under threat of violence. He made every effort to
evade his questioners, changing himself into a great variety of
shapes, such as those of a lion, panther, swine or serpent, and as a
last resource, into a form of fire or water. This faculty of
transformation, which both Proteus and Thetis possessed, corresponds
with the great changeability in the appearance of the sea."
http://www.dl.ket.org/latin1/mythology/1deities/gods/lesser/proteus.htm
You might also consider Dionysus, who embodied many contradictions:
"Of all the gods of ancient Greece, none has proved as enigmatic and
compelling as Dionysos. The god of wine, theatre and an orgiastic
nature religion, he was the only Olympian god born of a mortal mother.
The dynamic tension between the human and divine in Dionysos is a
paradox; he is not half-man and half-god, but rather a fully divine
being who conceals himself in human disguise. But as a polymorphous
god, he may also appear as his favorite beasts, the bull, leopard and
snake, or even as plants such as grapevine and ivy; thus he spans the
realms of human, divine, and wild nature. The paradoxical combinations
that he embodies bespeak an utter strangeness. A god of blissful
ecstasy and savage flesh-eating terror; a god described as
?effeminate? and yet also the bull-horned and phallic god of male
potency; an untamed god of wild mountain rites who brings pandemonium
in his wake, yet also a benefactor honored for his gifts of
viniculture and theatre, key elements of Greek civilization; he was a
fertility god, sometimes considered the life force itself, yet in his
myths he was a dark and liminal figure, frequently involved with the
spirits and realms of the dead; a subversive god whose myths tell of
his incitement to riot and the destruction of kings, yet he was later
embraced as a model for rulers as diverse as Alexander the great and
the Ptolemaic kings of Egypt (Burkert, p. 261-263)."
http://home.earthlink.net/~delia5/pagan/dio/Dionysos-99wtp.htm |
