Book of Emblems

All Most Ancient Things are Fictitious.

Old man of Pellene, Proteus, who possesses a theatrical form,
Who now bears the limbs of a man, now the limbs of a beast,
Come, tell me what reason turns you into all shapes,
So that you have no fixed figure among the variety?
I display the signs of antiquity and of the primeval age:
About which everyone dreams according to their own judgment.