Nereus

Nereus, the 'Old Man of the Sea', is an ancient and gentle sea-god, born of Pontus and Earth before the Olympians. Wise, truthful, and prophetic, he could change his shape at will, and would foretell the future to anyone able to hold him fast through all his transformations.

He is the kindly, calm aspect of the deep — the father of the fifty sea-nymphs called the Nereids, and an emblem of the sea's hidden wisdom beneath its restless surface.