by David Elvar
THE STORY OF ATHENE AND ARACHNE
(How the spider was created)
(A BratReads Book)
David Elvar
Copyright David Elvar 2016
~oOo~
There was a time in the land of Ancient Greece when men still believed in gods. There were many to believe in, each representing a facet of life.
There was Aphrodite, Goddess of Love, beautiful beyond the dreams of man and God alike. But also vain, foolish, given to playing with the feelings of those who adored her, and there were many who did.
There was Hephaestus, Blacksmith of the Gods, lame and crooked in body but wise and kind of heart, whose inventions and understanding of the workings of even the most complex machines were a constant source of wonder.
There was Artemis, Goddess of the Wild Hunt, whose skill with the bow was so great that she could shoot an arrow high into the air then shoot it down with another.
There was Poseidon, God of the Seas, ever dissatisfied with his ocean kingdom, who like the sea was always restless, who like the waves would constantly try to leave it for dry land, only to be dragged back every time.
And there was Athene, Goddess of Wisdom and beloved daughter of Zeus.
As well as being Goddess of Wisdom, Athene was patron of the crafts, and being generous, she would often pass on her knowledge to the mortals. She it was who first learned to spin wool and to make from it the finest cloth. She it was who showed the mortals how to make the wheel, the axe, the plough. But her greatest love lay in the craft of tapestry, of working needle and thread in a loom to produce designs depicting scenes of great battle, places of great beauty, people of great worth.
Many hours would she spend at her loom, weaving the finest tapestries to hang in the halls of Mount Olympus, but some she would give to mortals she considered deserving of them. Most were for acts of great kindness that someone may have shown, perhaps to a stranger, a traveller in need of shelter, a beggar in need of food.
In many ways, she was kind of heart, doing perhaps more than any other god what she could to help the mortals in their growing, and she knew they loved her in return. But in other ways, she was like her father, Zeus, and could fly into a jealous rage if she suspected that any mortal was in any way able to challenge her, particularly in the crafts she so loved to follow.
It so happened that there was such a mortal, a young woman living in the land of Lydia, which lay across the Aegean Sea from Athens, the acknowledged main city of Greece. Her name was Arachne.
She was well placed to practise her skill: Lydia was a land renowned for the fineness of its cloth and more especially for the great colour of its dyes, and from an early age, Arachne displayed a great skill at the loom. She was neat and could weave the tiniest stitches in the most delicate patterns. She also possessed a vivid imagination, so much so that her designs were bold and original, were true works of art.
As she grew in skill, she became ever more ambitious until, one day, she conceived of a giant tapestry that would tell the story of the gods. It would show the majesty of Zeus on his golden throne, the beauty of Aphrodite as she bathed, the swiftness of Artemis as she hunted. It was to be the greatest tapestry the world had ever seen and it was to be all her own making.
She worked hard on it. Days stretched into weeks, weeks into months, and still she worked, sometimes forsaking even food and sleep to bring her great work to completion.
At last it was finished. Arachne was justly proud of it and had it displayed on two long tables in the market square in her village. Word of it soon spread, people coming from miles around to marvel at it. As well they might, for it was truly a great work of art, as Arachne had intended, the greatest the world had ever seen.
And when the people had finished viewing it, they came to congratulate her on her achievement, to praise her and her great skill. But Arachne was a mortal, and like all mortals, could sometimes let praise go to her head, so much so that when people remarked that her skill was truly a gift from the gods, perhaps even Athene herself, she retorted:
‘Athene? Not she. She gave me but the simplest understanding of the stitchwork, as she gives to anyone who has the mind to listen and the skill to use it. But I have taken her art and turned it into something finer, something that not even the Goddess herself can match.’
And the people went away, muttering that no good would come of this girl and her boasting, but Arachne merely shrugged and watched them go. There would be others to come and admire her work, many others. Why, the whole of the known world would come to hear of Arachne and her great tapestry!
And she was right: the whole of the known world did indeed come to hear of it. But that known world also included Mount Olympus, and it could then be only a matter of time before Athene herself came to hear of it.
It came about by chance. Aphrodite was in one of her spiteful moods. Although she was very beautiful, she could not match the others in any skill or art, whether it be with the bow or at the loom. All she had was her beauty, and beauty alone is never enough, even for a goddess. Small wonder, then, that she often resorted to belittling the others.
‘I hear you have a rival,’ she said one day.
Athene looked up from her loom. ‘Rival?’ she said simply. She cared little for this goddess and her wiles, and tried to keep words with her to a minimum.
‘A girl,’ said Aphrodite. ‘In Lydia. Surely this is not news to you!’
‘I know all my pupils,’ said Athene, returning to her weaving, ‘and I know of none in Lydia.’
‘She is no pupil of yours,’ said Aphrodite, a mocking smile curving her lips, ‘and if what I hear of her work is true, I doubt she ever was.’
And with that, Aphrodite turned on her heel and left, well satisfied that she had caused the great Athene, Goddess of Wisdom, no small measure of discomfort.
Athene sat alone and silent, somehow unable to continue working. A rival? Unthinkable. And a mere mortal at that? Impossible. Or was it? She knew that these mortals were skilled and able. Had she not, after all, taken the most promising of them under her guidance? And along comes this girl, of whom none had previously spoken, who even a goddess was now telling her had a skill to match her own.
It troubled her, for she was a child of Zeus and as such had inherited many of his traits, not least his pride. But where her father’s pride led to a fear that the mortals might one day cease to need the gods, hers led to a fear that they might one day cease to love her. And that she could not bear.
As she sat there, she felt Aphrodite’s words keenly, even though she knew well the ploys this goddess would often stoop to in her spite, and she determined to find out if they were true: she would visit this girl whose skill had been compared with her own. She rose from her loom and vanished.
