In classical mythology, Arachne (Ancient Greek Ἀράχνη, "spider") is a Lydian weaver — daughter of the dyer Idmon of Colophon, associated with Hypaepa — who challenged Minerva (Athena) to a contest of tapestries. When the goddess tore her flawless web and struck her, Arachne hanged herself and was transformed into a spider. The tale is known primarily from Ovid's Metamorphoses and supplies an etiology of spiders' spinning.
Adapted from Wikipedia, "Arachne" · CC BY-SA 4.0
I.Identity
Ovid places Arachne in Lydia: her father Idmon dyed fleeces in Tyrian purple at Colophon; she herself was famed at Hypaepa. Pliny credits her with inventing linen cloth and nets, and her son Closter with introducing the spindle for wool. The first Vatican Mythographer names parents "Edmon" and "Ippopis." This atlas node is the Lydian weaver (arachne-lydia), not later figurative uses of the name.
II.Contest with Minerva
Proud of her skill, Arachne refused to acknowledge Minerva as teacher and dared the goddess to a contest. Minerva, first in the guise of an old woman, warned her; when Arachne insulted the crone, the goddess revealed herself. Minerva wove the gods' court and four corner scenes of mortals punished for hubris, centered on her dispute with Poseidon for Athens. Arachne answered with the gods' disguises and seductions — Europa, Leda, Danaë, and many others — a tapestry without technical flaw that exposed divine deceit.
Enraged, Minerva tore the web and struck Arachne with her shuttle. The girl hanged herself; the goddess, in pity (or as further punishment), sprinkled her with Hecate's herb until she shrank into a spider forever spinning. Virgil already calls the spider hated by Minerva; Lucian and the Vatican Mythographers retell the Maeonian maid's fate; a rarer Attic variant has Athena change Arachne and her brother Phalanx into spiders for incest.
III.Reception
Readers have taken the myth as a caution against hubris, an etiology of spiders, and — given weaving as a metaphor for poetry under Augustus — an allegory of art under censorship. Velázquez's Las Hilanderas restages the contest; Dante invokes Arachne's webs in Inferno; Spenser adapts her for Muiopotmos. The asteroid 407 Arachne bears her name.