Arachne

Arachne was born in the city of Colophon, or perhaps in Hypaepa, in the region of Lydia on the coast of Asia Minor. Her father was Idmon, a dyer who worked with the purple murex shells that made the famous Tyrian purple. She was a mortal girl, not a nymph or a princess, but her hands moved with a grace that seemed divine. From an early age she showed an extraordinary gift for weaving. Her tapestries did not merely depict scenes; they seemed alive. Flowers breathed, animals moved, and human figures seemed to think. Nymphs, the spirits of streams and forests, left their waters to stand at her door and watch her work. Word of her skill spread across Lydia and beyond, until travellers came from distant cities to see the weaver whose art rivalled nature itself.

But fame turned to pride. As Arachne's reputation grew, she began to boast that her skill exceeded that of Athena herself, the goddess of wisdom and war who had invented the loom and all the crafts of weaving. The goddess heard these boasts and was angered. She descended from Olympus, the home of the gods, and came to Arachne's village in the disguise of an old woman. She warned the girl to repent, to acknowledge the gifts of the gods and ask forgiveness for her arrogance. Arachne laughed and declared she would welcome a contest with the goddess, and if she lost, she would pay any penalty. Athena threw off her disguise and revealed herself in full divine glory, the aegis, her terrible shield, upon her breast and the olive wreath upon her head. The contest was set.

The two weavers set up their looms side by side. Athena wove a tapestry that showed the majesty of the gods and the fate of mortals who challenged them. In the centre stood the twelve Olympians in their power, and in the corners she depicted scenes of humans who had been punished for hubris, the fatal pride that brings down the mighty. Her work was flawless, the colours bright and the threads so fine that they seemed to be made of light itself. Arachne, undaunted, wove a different scene. She depicted the crimes of the gods, the deceptions and violations that the Olympians had committed against mortal women. She showed Zeus in his many disguises: as a bull carrying Europa, a Phoenician princess, across the sea; as a shower of gold visiting Danae, a princess imprisoned in a bronze tower; and as a swan pursuing Leda, the queen of Sparta. She showed Poseidon, the god of the sea, deceiving Medusa, the Gorgon whose face turned all who looked upon it to stone, in Athena's own temple, and Apollo, the god of music and light, pursuing the nymph Daphne until she turned into a laurel tree to escape him. Her tapestry was so perfect, so true, and so skilfully wrought that even Athena could not find fault with the weaving itself, though the subject matter was an accusation against the gods themselves.

Athena was enraged. She tore Arachne's tapestry to shreds with her shuttle and struck the girl across the face with the wooden tool. Arachne, humiliated and broken, ran to a beam and hung herself with a rope, unable to bear the shame. But Athena was not satisfied with her death. In a moment of cruel mercy, she sprinkled the girl with the juice of the poisonous herb aconite and transformed her. Arachne's body shrank, her head became tiny, her fingers grew long and thin, and her hair fell out. She became a spider, condemned to hang forever and to weave without ceasing, her descendants spinning webs in every corner of the world. The goddess had not killed her; she had made her immortal in the form of the creature whose name she bore.