Arachne
"Minerva, who'd lent an attentive ear to the Muses' narration.
Commended their song and their justified anger against the Pieredes,
Then she said to herself: 'Is praising enough? I also need to be praised in turn. No mortal shall scoff at my power
unpunished.' She therefore considered how best to dispose of a Lydian
girl called Arachne, who claimed ( so she'd heard) to equal herself
in working with wool.
Arachne's distinction lay not in her birth
or the place that she hailed from but solely her art. Her father , Idmon
of colophon, practised the trade of dyeing wool in Phocaean
purple;her mother was dead but, like her husband had come
from the people. Their daughter, however had gained a high reputation
throughout the Lydian towns for her work with wool, although
she'd be born in a humble home and lived in a village, Hypaepa.
The nymphs used often to live their haunts, Mount Tmolus' vines
or the banks of the river Pactolus, to gaze on Arachne's amazing
artistry, equally eager to watch her hand in progress
(her skill was so graceful) as much as to look at the finished article.
Perhaps she was forming the first round clumps
from the wool in its crude state,
shaping the stuff in her fingers and steadily teasing the cloud-like
fleece into long soft threads. She might have been deftly applying
her thumb to the polished spindle.
Or esle they would watch embroider
a picture. Whatever she did, you would know Minerva had taught her.
Arachne herself, in indignant pride, denied such a debt.
'Let us hold a contest,' she said. 'If I'm beaten, I'll pay any forfeit.' (...) "
Extract from Metamorphoses by Ovid translated by Denis Feeney
Photos by Sandra Saldanha
