Mythos: A Retelling of the Myths of Ancient Greece

A murmur rose from the onlookers who pressed round on all sides to get a closer look. The following series of images made it all too clear what Arachne was up to. Here was ASTERIA, daughter of the Titans Phoebe and Coeus, despairingly turning herself into a quail to try and escape the rapacious attentions of Zeus in the shape of an eagle. Next to this Arachne wove a picture of Zeus as a swan insinuating himself around the body of TYNDAREUS’s wife LEDA. Now he was a dancing satyr chasing the beautiful Antiope; next the lustful god appeared in one of his strangest metamorphoses – a shower of golden rain, in which unlikely manifestation he could be clearly seen impregnating the imprisoned DANAË, daughter of King ACRISIUS of Argos. Many of these ravishings and seductions were the subjects of mortal gossip. For Arachne to be bringing them to life in coloured silk was unpardonable. Further scenes of Zeus’s depraved career followed – the hapless nymph Aegina and the lovely Persephone molested by him in the form of a speckled snake. The rumour that in this manner Zeus had once taken Persephone, his own daughter by Demeter, had been whispered before, but for Arachne to show it now was sacrilege.

Yet Zeus was not the only god whose tales of degeneracy she wrote in thread. Scenes of Poseidon now appeared, the sea god shown first as a bull, galloping after the frightened ARNE of Thessaly, then disguised as the mortal ENIPEUS so as to win the lovely Tyro, finally as a dolphin in his pursuit of the enchanting MELANTHO, daughter of Deucalion.

Apollo’s depredations were the next to appear: Apollo the hawk, Apollo the lion, Apollo the shepherd, all despoiling maidens without pity or shame. And Dionysus too was portrayed, disguising himself as a large cluster of grapes to deceive the beautiful ERIGONE, and in a fit of temper, transforming ALCATHOË and the MINYADESfn3 into bats for daring to prefer a contemplative life to one of frenzied revelry.

All these episodes and more were summoned by Arachne’s art. They shared the common theme of the gods taking deceitful and often savage advantage of mortal women. Arachne completed her work by weaving around it a patterned edge of interlacing flowers and ivy leaves. When she was done she calmly pushed the shuttle to one side and stood up to stretch.

The Reward

The onlookers drew back horrified, fascinated and disturbed. The girl’s audacity was breathtaking, but there could be no denying the supreme skill and artistry with which this bold but blasphemous work had been executed.

Athena came forward to examine every inch of the surface and could see no blemish or flaw. It was perfect. Perfect but sacrilegious and impermissible. In silence she ripped the web and tore up every scene. Finally, unable to master her rage, she snatched up the shuttle and hurled it at Arachne’s head.

The pain of the shuttle striking her brow seemed to waken Arachne from her trance. What had she done? What madness had possessed her? She would never be allowed to weave again. She would be made to pay a terrible price for her insolence. The punishments that had been visited on the girls whose fates she had registered in her tapestry would be as nothing to those visited upon her.

She took a length of thick hemp from the floor. ‘If I cannot weave I cannot live!’ she cried and ran from the cottage before anyone could even think of stopping her.

The spectators pressed around the window and the open door and watched in frozen horror as Arachne ran across the grass, swung the rope over the branch of an apple tree and hanged herself. They turned as one to look at Athena.

A tear rolled down the goddess’s cheek. ‘Foolish, foolish girl,’ she said.

The crowd of onlookers followed her in appalled silence as she made her way out of the cottage and towards the tree. Arachne was swinging at the end of the rope, her dead eyes bulging from her head.

‘A talent like yours can never die,’ Athena said. ‘You shall spin and weave all your days, spin and weave, spin and weave …’

As she spoke Arachne started to shrivel and shrink. The rope she dangled from stretched itself into a thin filament of glistening silk up which she now pulled herself, a girl no longer but a creature destined always busily to spin and weave.

This is how the first spider – the first arachnid – came into being. It was not a punishment as some would have it, but a prize for winning a great competition, a reward for a great artist. The right to work and weave masterpieces in perpetuity.

More Metamorphoses