Greek sea gods conform to a single type: that of Homer's "halios geron" or Old Man of the Sea: Nereus, Proteus, Glaucus and Phorkys. These sea gods are not as powerful as Poseidon, the main god of the oceans and seas. Each one is a shape-shifter, a prophet, and the father of either radiantly beautiful nymphs or hideous monsters (or both, in the case of Phorkys). Nymphs and monsters blur, for Hesiod relates that Phorcys was wed to the "beautiful-cheeked" Ceto, whose name is merely the feminine of the monstrous Cetus, to whom Andromeda was due to be sacrificed. Each appearance in myth
The God Beneath the Sea About the writing process the authors told "Junior Bookshelf" (August 1971), "We wrote together, much of the time. One of us would actually commit the words to paper. There were often long silences. These might be broken, not by a grave suggestion as to further text, but by some wild burst of laughter. Much of the matter we were dealing with was most grim and tense. Laughter - and some schoolboyish joking - helped." Charles Keeping drew fifteen illustrations for "The God Beneath the Sea". His work was widely acclaimed by critics, but Keeping himself was dissatisfied with the illustrations.