Mythos: A Retelling of the Myths of Ancient Greece

Arachne

The Weaver

In a small cottage outside a little town called Hypaepae in the kingdom of Lydiafn1 there dwelt a merchant and craftsman called IDMON. He worked in the nearby Ionian city of Colophon as a trader in dyes, specializing in the highly prized colour Phocaean purple. His wife had died giving birth to a girl, ARACHNE. Idmon was as proud of Arachne as ever father was of daughter. For since her early childhood she had shown the most extraordinary skill as a weaver.

Spinning and weaving were naturally of great importance in those days. Next to the growing of food few things were as crucial to human welfare as the reliable manufacture of textiles for clothing and furnishing. And ‘manufacture’ is quite the right word. It literally means ‘making by hand’ – and all such work was done by hand then. Fleece or flax was spun into threads and loaded onto looms to be woven into woollen or linen cloth. It was so much the province of skilled women that the very gender itself was given names in some cultures and languages that reflected the practice. In English we still talk of the ‘distaff side’ of a family, meaning the female line. The distaff was the spindle around which the wool or flax was wound preparatory to spinning. And those who spun were called ‘spinsters’, a name which once applied without negative connotation to any unmarried woman.

But as with almost all human practices, there are those who have the mysterious ability to raise the everyday and ordinary to the level of art.

From the very first Arachne’s skill at the loom was the talk and pride of all Ionia. The speed and accuracy of her work were astonishing; the assurance and dexterity with which she selected one coloured thread after another, almost without looking, stunned the admirers who often crowded into Idmon’s cottage to watch her at work. But it was the pictures, patterns and intricate designs that emerged from under the blur of her shuttle that caused onlookers to burst into spontaneous applause and declare her without equal. The forests, palaces, seascapes and mountain views she created were so real that you felt you could jump into them. It wasn’t only the mortal citizens of Colophon and Hypaepae that came to see her at her loom: local naiads from the River Pactolus and oreads from nearby Mount Tmolus crowded into the cottage and shook their heads in wonder too.

All were agreed that Arachne was the kind of phenomenon that might come only once in five centuries of history. To be so technically skilled was cause for admiration enough, but to be endowed with such taste – she never overdid the use of purples or other costly and showy dyes, for example – that was the miracle.

Such praise as she daily received would have gone to anyone’s head. Arachne was not a spoiled or conceited child – in fact when not at the loom she came across as practical and prosaic rather than flighty or temperamental. She understood that she had been given a gift and was not one to claim personal credit for it. But she did value her talent and believed that in rating it at its proper worth she was simply being honest.

‘Yes,’ she murmured, gazing down at her work one fateful afternoon, ‘I truly think if Pallas Athena herself were to sit down and spin with me she would find herself unable to match my skill. After all, I do this every day and she only weaves once in a while, for amusement. It’s no wonder I am so far her superior.’

With so many nymphs present in the front room of Idmon’s cottage you can be sure that news soon got back to Athena of Arachne’s ill-chosen words.

The Weave-Off

A week or so later, the usual crowd gathered round her, Arachne sat at the loom completing a tapestry that represented the founding of Thebes. Gasps and moans of appreciation greeted her depiction of the dragon-tooth warriors rising from the earth, but the oohs and aahs of her admirers were interrupted by a loud knocking on the cottage door.

It was opened to reveal a bent and wrinkled old woman. ‘I do hope I’ve come to the right place,’ she wheezed, dragging in a great sack. ‘I’m told a wonderful weaver lives here. Ariadne, is it?’

She was invited inside. ‘Her name is Arachne,’ they told her, pointing to the girl herself seated at her loom.

‘Arachne. I see. May I look? My dear, these are your own? How superb.’

Arachne nodded complacently.

The old woman plucked at the weave. ‘Hard to believe that a mortal could do such work. Surely Athena herself had a hand in this?’

‘I hardly think,’ Arachne said with a touch of impatience, ‘that Athena could do anything half so fine. Now, please don’t unpick it.’

‘Oh, you think Athena inferior to you?’

‘In the matter of weaving it’s hardly a matter of opinion.’

‘What would you say to her if she was here now, I wonder?’

‘I would urge her to confess that I am the better weaver.’

‘Then urge away, foolish mortal!’

With these words the wrinkles on the ancient face smoothed away, the dull, clouded eyes cleared to a shining grey and the bent old woman straightened herself into the magnificent form of Athena herself. The crowd of onlookers fell back in stunned surprise. The nymphs in particular shrank into the corners, ashamed and frightened to be seen wasting their time admiring the work of a mortal.

Arachne went very pale and her heart thudded within her, yet outwardly she managed to keep her composure. It was disconcerting to have those grey eyes fixed upon her but all their wisdom and steadiness of gaze could not alter the plain truth.

‘Well,’ said she with as much calmness in her voice as she could manage, ‘I’ve no wish to offend, but it is, I think, undoubtedly true that as an artist of the loom I have no rival, on earth or on Olympus.’

‘Really?’ Athena arched an eyebrow. ‘Let’s discover then. Would you like to go first?’

‘No, please …’ Arachne vacated her seat and pointed to the loom. ‘After you.’

Athena examined the frame. ‘Yes, this will do,’ she said. ‘Phocaean purple, I see. Not bad, but I prefer Tyrian.’ So saying she pulled from her sack a quantity of coloured wools. ‘Now then …’

Within seconds she was at work. The boxwood shuttle flew back and forth and, magically, wonderful images began to appear. The crowd of people pressed forward. They saw that Athena was bringing to life nothing less than the story of the gods themselves. There was the gelding of Ouranos in all its gory detail; how sticky the blood looked. There the birth of Aphrodite; how fresh and damp the ocean spray. Here was a panel that showed Kronos swallowing Rhea’s children, and here another of the infant Zeus being suckled by the she-goat Amalthea. Athena even wove into the tapestry the story of her own birth from Zeus’s head. Next came a dazzling depiction of all twelve gods enthroned on Olympus. But she wasn’t finished yet.

As if deliberately and publicly to humiliate Arachne for her presumption, Athena now created panels that showed the price paid by mortals for daring to set themselves up as equals or superiors to the gods. In the first she showed Queen RHODOPE and King HAEMUS of Thrace, who were changed into mountains for daring to compare their grandeur as a couple to that of Hera and Zeus. And in another panel Athena wove the image of GERANA, Queen of the Pygmies, who proclaimed her beauty and importance to be greater by far than that of the Queen of Heaven and had been transformed by an enraged Hera into a crane-bird. In that same corner she wove a picture of ANTIGONE, who had her hair turned into snakes for a similar act of impudence.fn2 Finally Athena adorned the border of her work with designs of olive – the tree holy to her – before standing to receive the acclamation that was her due.

Arachne was gracious enough to join in the applause. Her mind had worked as fast as Athena’s shuttle and she knew just what she was going to create. A kind of madness had overcome her. Having found herself in the unlooked-for position of competing against an Olympian goddess, she now wanted to show the world not just that she was the better weaver, but that humans were better than gods in every way. It maddened her that Athena should present so grandiose a subject as the birth and establishment of the Olympian deities and then depict such clumsy fables of punished hubris. Well, two could play the game of parables. She would show her!

Arachne sat down, cracked her knuckles and began. The first form that came to life beneath her flying fingers was that of a bull. There was a young girl riding it. Another panel showed the bull rising in the air and crossing the sea. The girl looked back over the waves towards young men running in panic to the cliffside. Could it be? Was this scene the ravishing of Europa and were those boys Cadmus and his brothers?

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.