Arachne and Athena

Ovid ties the story to the scene just before it. Athena (Minerva in Ovid's Latin) has heard the Muses sing and approves their song and their anger, but she thinks it is easy to praise someone else. She resolves that no earthly creature should slight her majesty, and her thoughts turn to Arachne, a girl of Lydia famous for her skill at weaving wool and for nothing else. Her father dyed wool in Phocean purple in Colophon, her mother was of low birth and dead, and Arachne lived in a small town.

She was so good that nymphs left the vineyards of Tmolus and the streams of the Pactolus to watch her card, spin and embroider. Ovid says every motion showed how much Minerva had taught her, but Arachne always denied it. She said, "Let her contend in art with me; and if her skill prevails, I then will forfeit all!"

Athena took her at her word. She came to Arachne disguised as an old woman with long grey hair and a staff, and gave her a warning. It is no harm to want praise from mortals, she said, but Arachne should not deny Minerva's art and should ask the goddess's pardon. Arachne dropped her thread, scowled, and could barely keep her hand from striking. She called the old woman a witless fool and told her to advise her own goddess to come and not avoid the contest. "Minerva comes to you!" the goddess answered, and put off the disguise. The nymphs and the women of Mygdonia bowed. Arachne stood defiant, flushed, went pale, and blushed again.

Both women set up looms at once and wove without a word more. Ovid's Athena wove the hill of Ares in Athens, where Cecrops built his citadel, and the old contest over the city's name. Twelve gods sit on high thrones around Zeus, each drawn so that he can be told apart. Poseidon strikes the rock with his trident and a horse springs out, and Athena, with shield, spear and aegis, makes an olive tree sprout from the earth. The gods judge that the olive is the better gift. This is the contest told in The Birth of Athena and her own page.

In the four corners she wove warnings, small and brightly coloured. Rhodope and Haemus were turned into mountains for aspiring to rival the high gods. A Pygmy queen was changed into a crane by Hera, because she thought herself the equal of the gods. Antigone, Laomedon's daughter, who compared herself to Hera, became a stork. And Cinyras wept on the steps of a temple that had once been his daughter's living limbs. Athena finished with a border of olive. Her whole web says one thing: this is what presumption earns.

Arachne wove the opposite. She wove the gods' seductions and deceptions, and Ovid lists them. Zeus comes as the bull that carries off Europa (The Rape of Europa), as an eagle to Asteria, as a swan to Leda, as a satyr to Antiope, as Amphitryon to Alcmena, as a shower of gold to Danae, as a flame to Aegina, as a shepherd to Mnemosyne, and as a spotted snake to Persephone. Poseidon appears as a bull, a river, a ram, a horse, a bird with Medusa, and a dolphin. Apollo shows up as a rustic, a hawk, a lion and a shepherd. Dionysus is a cluster of false grapes and Saturn a stallion. Arachne bordered the web with flowers and ivy. Ovid adds that all of it was woven true to life.

Athena could find no flaw. Ovid says even Envy cannot censure perfect art, and she was enraged because Arachne had such skill. She tore the web to pieces, ruining the scenes of the gods' wicked actions, and struck Arachne on the head with her boxwood shuttle, sharply three times and then once more. Arachne would not bear the insult. She tied a cord around her neck and hung herself.

Athena pitied her at the sight, held her up and saved her from that death, but was angry still. She pronounced a different doom, given in the passage below. Then, before withdrawing, she sprinkled Arachne with a juice made from herbs of Hecate. At once Arachne's hair fell off, and her nose and ears with it. Her head shrank, and so did her whole body. Her slender fingers gathered to her sides as long thin legs, the rest of her was absorbed into her belly, and from it she drew a fine thread. Ovid ends: "ever since, Arachne, as a spider, weaves her web."