Arachne and Athena

Clack, clack. Clack, clack. A steady beat rang out from a small loom set close to the window, as even as breathing, never once stopping. A polished wooden shuttle slid back and forth between two layers of tight threads. It carried strands dyed deep red, bright blue and shining gold. With every pass, the cloth on the loom grew by one more fine row. The hands that guided that shuttle moved so fast that the eye could hardly follow them.

The weaver of that cloth was a mortal girl named Arachne. Her weaving and her embroidery were so skillful that the nymphs of the woods and the nymphs of the springs left their familiar homes and came to her, just to stand and watch her hands at work. Everyone marveled. They said they had never seen stitches so fine, not even in the palaces of the gods.

People also whispered to one another that Arachne must have been taught in person by the goddess Athena, the patron of weaving. Only then, they said, could she have hands so gifted. But Arachne would not accept that. She refused to be thought of as anyone's pupil, not even a goddess's. "Let Athena try her skill with mine," she declared, full of confidence. "If I lose, I will accept the penalty."

The challenge traveled far, all the way to Mount Olympus, where the gods lived. Before long, a stooped old woman with snow-white hair came to Arachne's door and offered some gentle advice. She told the girl to apologize for her rash words and not to be so foolish as to compete with the gods. Arachne had no idea that the old woman was Athena in disguise. She answered, rather sharply, that the old woman should save her advice for her own daughters or her servants. As for herself, she knew exactly what she had said, and she stood by it. She was not afraid of any goddess. Let the goddess come and try her skill, if she dared. The moment Arachne finished speaking, the old woman before her quietly shed her aged form. Athena stood there, majestic and shining.

The contest began at once. Two looms were set up side by side, one for each of them, and both set to work without wasting a moment. The two most gifted pairs of hands in the worlds of mortals and gods passed their shuttles at the same moment through countless threads of every color. Red like the sunset. Blue like the deep sea. Gold like the early morning sun. Thread followed thread, and two cloths took shape before the eyes of everyone watching.

Athena's cloth showed the gods in all their majesty and splendor, each one standing in the place that was rightfully theirs. In the four corners, she wove small scenes of a few mortals who had once arrogantly challenged the gods and then suffered heavy consequences. The onlookers shivered and fell silent. No one dared to look at those four corners for long. They were a quiet warning, hidden skillfully in every thread.

Arachne's cloth showed something entirely different. It showed times when the gods had disguised themselves in other shapes, behaved badly and deceived mortals. Her stitches were so fine that no one could find fault with them. Every fold of a robe and every glance of the figures in her cloth looked truly alive. They were so lovely that the onlookers forgot they were looking at cloth woven by hand.

Athena looked at Arachne's cloth for a long time. The goddess could not find a single flaw in the girl's craft. Even Athena, the patron of weaving, had to admit that those hands were every bit as gifted as her own. But what the cloth showed made the goddess furious. She seized her own shuttle, struck the cloth with it and tore it into pieces. Then she touched Arachne lightly on the forehead. With that single touch, all the shame and guilt of what she had done rushed into the young woman's heart. It weighed on her so heavily that she sank to her knees beside her own loom.

Arachne covered her face, trembling all over. The cloth she had poured all her talent into was now only scraps lying at her feet. Athena stood in silence, looking down at the girl who had collapsed before her. In the goddess's heart, the anger was still there. But something else was mixed in with it, almost a respect she could not deny. Even she could find no fault with the craft of those gifted hands, though she could never accept what they had chosen to weave. Athena could not bear to let such a talent vanish completely. She reached out and touched Arachne once more, to give her a different fate.

Right before the eyes of the onlookers, Arachne's hair fell away, lock by lock. Her nose and ears faded away as well. Her body drew in, smaller and smaller, and her head shrank with it. Her fingers clung tight to her sides and became slender legs. In a moment, where the girl had stood beside the loom, there was only a tiny creature with many legs. From its own body it began to draw out a fine thread, thinner than any thread she had woven as a woman. Arachne had become a spider. But her gifted hands had not been lost. They had only changed form, so that she could weave forever, never growing old, with no one left to challenge and no one left to rival.

This old myth has long been told to explain why spiders weave their webs so skillfully. Tonight, in the corner of a dew-damp wall or on a bush still holding the mist, a spider's web is hanging, delicate and perfectly even. Drops of dew glitter on it like tiny beads. The spider sits still in the middle of that web, hanging in the air from the very thread it has just spun, silent and patient. No clacking shuttle rings out anymore. There is only a silence full of attention, as if those gifted hands from long ago were still there. They have only taken another shape, and they go on weaving, weaving forever, never stopping.