By borrowed shapes obscured, and lost in seeming stone.”
It was also frequently referred to by other writers. Athenæus quotes Theognis of Megara as saying in his Elegies:—
“Remark the tricks of that most wary polypus,
Who always seems of the same colour and hue
As is the rock on which he lies;”
and Ion the tragedian, who wrote in his “Phœnix”:—
“I hate the colour-changing polypus
Clinging with bloodless feelers to the rocks.”
It was also the subject of a maxim equivalent to our “When you’re at Rome, do as Rome does.” A proverb cited by Clearchus runs thus:—