occasional reminder that that’s (probably) not how the myth went [prior to Ovid getting his hands on it and making some ‘alterations’]

[you may recall my commentary viz. what he did to the myth around Artemis and Actaeon – wherein we know, due to various other tellings and the Vedic cognate, that it’s a story about a male attempting to ambush & rape the Goddess … and hence he’s turned into a stag/deer and ripped apart by Wolves / Hunting Dog(s). Ovid, meanwhile, ‘metamorphosized’ [what I did there, was i misspelled a word] it into an unlucky mortal just accidentally wandering in the wrong part of the woods and happening to stumble upon Artemis bathing and … then for his trouble being turned into a stag and ripped apart by his own hunting dogs. And making some comment about the morally blameless situation of the human and so forth in the text, iirc … you see how these are … pointedly different takes]

Anyway, what appears to have been the likely archaic and proper understanding for the myth viz. Athena & Arachne … is not that Arachne was transformed into a spider due to doing a better job at weaving than Athena and ‘sore loser’ or whatever.

But rather, due to what Arachne chose to weave into her tapestry effort … well, in the original Latin, the succinct descriptor is: “caelestia crimina” – the ‘Crimes of the Gods’.

So, having already insulted Athena (Who’d turned up disguised as an old woman), and pointedly not gotten the message even despite being directly told it by Her, and then shown it through Athena’s choice of subject-matter for Her tapestry [basically, on the one hand, the proper and reciprocal ‘looking after’ of Gods and pious mortals … and Her besting even Poseidon (Who somewhat presumptuously tries claiming He’s actually won, before She’s even made Her move … see the resonance?), through creative ingenuity and boon bestowing to Her People ; and, on the other hand , an array of pointed “this is what happens if you want to go with the ‘active disrespect / impiety approach instead …” incidences from the mythos as well … ] ..

I suppose we might say of Arachne that she spun around … and then she found out.

I mean, seriously – Athena produces a tapestry depicting Her beneficence (and … always winning – so as to ensure Her people benefit, likewise from same) alongside a “here’s a bunch of rather negative punishments that can ensue for such conduct … featuring forcible shape-changing … “

… and Arachne’s response to this is to, as I say, weave a series of calculated insults – as if daring the Divine to ‘live up’ to the warning-signs.

Ovid, of course, makes the figures woven by Athena as ‘examples’ guilty of rather particular sorts of ‘compared self to divinity, found to be insulting, soo …’ – however it’s interesting to observe that in various cases, other renditions of those relevant myths have the mortals in question having broader crimes of impiety [Cinyras, for instance, winds up with descriptions of oathbreaking and fraudulent deception of an ally, being party to incest , and some other things] to their names.

So, Arachne engaged in a rather incredibly foolhardy ‘defamation’ exercise [speculated to perhaps have been Ovid having a bit of a whinge about artistic censorship under the then-Roman government , which had wound up with his being sent into exile … ], and got the not inevitable result.

Not inevitable, I say, because Athena gave her several chances / warnings etc. to change course, but .. well .. yee.

As it turned out – Arachne could, indeed, weave a mighty fine tapestry.

But the Tapestry of Fate … that is not her handiwork.

And Athena weaves Reality [there’s a ‘Maya’ remark here also – viz. .. ‘veil’ and ‘magical potency’].

There was always only going to be one (righteous) winner.