protean

"Pinball, 1973" を読んでいますが、題名のピンボールの話がやっと出て来ました。
With devastating speed people kept providing the singularly undistinguished protean machine with ever-newer capabilities. Someone proclaimed, "Let there be lights!" Someone else shouted, "Let there be electricity!" Still another shouted, "Let there be flippers!" And so there came to be lights illuminating the field, electricity to deflect balls magnetically, two flipper arms to whip them back into play.
ピンボールが "protean machine" とはどう言う意味でしょうか？ "protean" を辞書で調べます。
・Collins Dictionary: readily taking on various shapes or forms; variable: Eros is protean and adopts many shapes, and not all take the forms of amorous attachment.
・Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary:
1: of or resembling Proteus in having a varied nature or ability to assume different forms
2: displaying great diversity or variety : versatile: a protean actor who is equally comfortable with light comedy and serious drama
・Vocabulary.com: taking on different forms: “eyes...of that baffling protean grey which is never twice the same”
When Picasso is described as a protean genius, it means that not only was he brilliant, but he changed the way he worked many times. Protean means able to change shape.
Proteus was a Greek god who could tell the future, but when he was asked a question he didn't want to answer, he would change shapes. With someone or something protean, you get all the power of shape-shifting, plus some of the menace of a god you cannot control.
ギリシャ神話から来た言葉ですか、そう言えば大昔（高校生の頃）習った様な気がしました。