Latin Report: The Story of Athena and Arachne (time immemorial)

Alo Party Peoples.

Back in September, I used this blog for my Latin class to do a report on Caligula. It was well received by my readers, and I got a good grade on it, so I decided to do this again. This time, I was asked to do a report on a Greek hero. Arachne isn't a hero exactly, but my teacher decided to add her in as because we needed some women in there. The moral being told is simple, don't anger the gods.

Speaking of deities. There is something that I believe requires explaining for those that aren't very familiar with Greco-Roman polytheism. Greek gods were very different from the idea of God that most of us are familiar with. Plurality aside, Greek gods were not perfect beings. They had the same vices and imperfections that we mortals have to deal with. Pride, lust, jealousy, vanity, conflict, these were not things that the Olympians were immune to. They were basically humans, just with the power of gods.

The Story

Arachne was a mortal woman from Lydia that was gifted in the art of weaving, not just that she made beautiful tapestries, but that the act of making them was a sight to behold. She was so gifted in fact, that some claimed that she MUST have been taught by Athena herself, the Greek goddess of the arts.

Athena, curious to see what could have possibly sparked such a claim, took on the form of an old woman and went down to Earth to talk with Arachne. While there, she told Arachne that while she was indeed talented, she was not above the gods. Arachne grew prideful, and claimed that she was indeed above the gods, she even challenged Athena to a weaving contest, Athena then revealed herself to Arachne and accepted the challenge.

When the contest began, Athena wove a tapestry of her contest with Poseidon over who would be the patron of Athens, Poseidon provided the city with a useless saltwater spring, while Athena provided them with the olive tree. Thus she won that contest and the city was named Athens to honor her. Her tapestry was marvelous, and it was a celebration of the Olympian's successes. Arachne however depicted the many times that the gods had abused mortals, or showed imperfection themselves. In particular, Zeus's many, many, MANY mistresses. Still her weaving was glorious, so glorious in fact that even Athena couldn't deny that Arachne's skill was superior to her own. As a result, she grew furious with Arachne and replaced her limitless confidence with a crushing guilt. For weeks she grew depressed, it got so bad that she eventually hung herself.

The goddess was shocked by this, she didn't mean to hurt her, just teach her a lesson. She had no idea that Arachne would react so dramatically. So she went to Arachne's corpse and brought her back from the dead, but she also turned her into the first spider. She and her descendants were to forever weave their beautiful work, but men will never recognize her talent and would tear it down forever more.

That's just one version of the story, some state that Athena forced Arachne to hang herself directly, others state that turning her into a spider was the first punishment. Either way the lesson about humility has been conveyed.

Later Influence

Arachne, as depicted in
The Heroes Of Olympus
book series by Rick Riordan. Illustration
by John Rocco

• The term "arachnophobia" is derived both from Arachne, and from Phobos, the Greek god of fear.
• The Latin word "araneae" is descended from Arachne, which in Greek simply means "spider", and they spell it "αράχνη". Thus many of the Romance languages got their word for spiders from that Latin root. For example: the French "araignée", the Spanish "araña", and the Portugese "aranha". English is not a Romance language, although it does get many words from Latin.
• In the "Percy Jackson & The Olympians" books by Rick Riordan, children of Athena have an irrational fear of spiders. The sequel series, "The Heroes Of Olympus" featured Arachne as a giant humanoid spider that gets stuck in a massive Chinese finger trap made from her own silk. Remind me to eventually talk about this series.

So, I hope that you have learned something from this, and like I said in my first post for the Latin class, go and research for yourself.

Have a nice day.

Greg.B


Sources were:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arachne

http://www.greeka.com/greece-myths/arachne.htm

Google Translate

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qW3Bbav7w4A