Arachne's Myth by Ovid

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