Why was Arachne turned into a spider?

A weaver who owed no one

Ovid opens Book 6 of the Metamorphoses with her. Arachne comes from nowhere special. Her father, Idmon of Colophon, dyes wool with Phocaean purple, her mother is dead, and she lives in Hypaepa, a small town in Lydia. Her only fame is her skill. Nymphs leave the vineyards of Mount Tmolus and the waters of the Pactolus, the river where Midas washed off his golden touch, just to watch her card, spin and embroider.

Anyone could see, Ovid says, that Athena had trained those hands. Arachne denies it, unwilling to share the credit, and goes further: “Let her contend in art with me.” Ovid, writing in Latin, calls the goddess by her Roman name, Minerva, or by her title Pallas.

A last chance

Athena comes first as an old woman with gray hair and a staff. Her advice is mild. Be proud of your skill among mortals, but ask the goddess’s pardon, “for she will grant you pardon if you ask.” Arachne scowls, drops her thread and sends the old woman away: “advise your goddess to come here herself.” The disguise falls. “Minerva comes to you!” The nymphs bow. Arachne flushes red, then white, and holds her ground. Two looms are set up side by side.

Two tapestries

Athena weaves power in good order. The twelve gods sit enthroned around Zeus on the Acropolis, judging her contest with Poseidon for Athens, which her olive tree wins. In the four corners she adds small warnings: mortals who challenged the gods and were turned into mountains, a crane, a stork and the steps of a temple. Her border is a frame of olive leaves.

Arachne weaves the gods at their worst: Zeus disguised as a bull, a swan and a shower of gold, then Poseidon, Apollo and Dionysus in disguises of their own, each deceiving a mortal woman. Ovid’s Latin calls her subject caelestia crimina, heavenly crimes. Her border is flowers twined with ivy.

Not Pallas, nor Envy himself, could find a flaw in that work. The golden-haired goddess was indignant at her success, and rent the embroidered web with its heavenly crimes

So the familiar version, in which Arachne loses a weaving contest, misreads Ovid. Her work was perfect. She was punished for refusing to bow, and for what she chose to show.

From girl to spider

Athena strikes her on the head with a boxwood shuttle, three or four times. Arachne cannot bear the insult and tries to hang herself. The goddess holds her up and passes a sentence that keeps the cord: “Live on, indeed, wicked girl, but hang thou still.” Sprinkled with the juice of Hecate’s herbs, Arachne loses her hair, her head shrinks, her fingers become thin legs, and from her body comes a thread. She is still weaving.

In Greek, arachnē simply means spider. That is why spiders, scorpions, ticks and mites are called arachnids, and the fear of spiders arachnophobia.

Readers have long noticed that Arachne’s tapestry looks like Ovid’s own poem, full of gods in disguise and wronged mortals. Its author would soon pay for his art too: in AD 8 an emperor who called himself the son of a god banished him.