Weaver

Arachne, the daughter of the famous dyer Idmon of Colophon, weaved clothes and tapestries. She took her work to the agora and sold it each day. She was always happy to answer questions about it – and to boast.

“There’s nothing better than confidence in your work,” she said, when people expressed surprise at how forthcoming she was. “That’s why I think my weaving is the best in the world. Not a nice sentiment, you might think. But it’s true – and my attitude is wise. Without some measure of pride, you’ll have no standards, and come to nothing.”

“But too much can kill you.” “Just because of your father, girl –“ “You think of yourself as a god!”

And yet, she was patronised, and respected. Arachne’s work may have been the best in the world; it was certainly the best Colophon’s citizens had ever seen. And they were a rich, relaxed people – some said, the most affluent of the Mediterranean. Every day in the agora was a fight to be noticed among throngs of shifting rainbow chitons and togas, regal statues, scores of painted pots on display, goods and foods of every colour and type. But it was a fight Arachne had little trouble winning – and this was not merely a result of her attitude.

“Her pride may rival the gods,” the crowds said, “but her skill does, too. How perfectly balanced!”

She worked fast and with efficiency, and while the weaver’s obstinacy had earned her enmities, those customers who braved her arduous personality never came away unduly displeased. Soon, Arachne’s reputation began to rival Idmon’s own.

“Arachne, you’re getting too old for this level of exhibition.” Her father told her, in the privacy of their home. “I have no confidence in the men here. I’m going to Ephesus to find you a husband.”

“But, father-“

“I will return in seven days. One more thing, daughter. You must stop this excess of self-praise. It does not do well for a mere artisan to express pride in frivolities, such as weaving…you know, I am the foremost dyer in purple in the East, and I never speak of it unless spoken to…”

And so on he went, in an ironic vein, and she seethed until he elected to follow her into silence, taking as his guide the drink. And the next day, when Idmon departed for Ephesus, Arachne changed nothing of her ways.

“I genuinely believe I could rival Athena with this.” She gestured at a new work. This was a pastoral scene, of Corydon on a mountain with his flute in one hand, grasping a young shepherdess by the arm. She inspected the flax sky again. Yes, she had depicted it exactly as it was – Arachne looked at the real sky, framed by the temple to Zeus on the hill. (An interesting scene, to be explored later. Perhaps a landscape. At this, the fire rose in her blood – a huge work, bigger than any which had been previously attempted…she’d need a larger loom…).

“Young lady.” The person to whom she’d been speaking, a crone with a plain brown robe (a thoroughly uninteresting subject) redirected her attentions. “You claim to be superior to the gods themselves?”

“Oh, gods this, gods that. They’re honestly not all that great at their arts. They start out with everything. And they get sour when they lose – did you ever hear about Marsyas?”

“An unwise invocation, girl. Foolish beyond belief.” The crone replied, her tone insulting.

“I had to work to get this good. Athena only invented weaving – she didn’t practice it. She doesn’t really get it. Do you know how many callouses-“

“Would you care to repeat that?”

“Such sharpness from a rusted old thing!”

“The skill of Athena…you know nothing of it.” And with a stuttering laugh, the truculent woman straightened her bent-tree back, and at her full height she was taller than Arachne, and suddenly her robe fell away exposing the pure white chiton underneath and her hair turned to gold and her eyes lost their wrinkles and became cold, objective, like sheets of grey ice; where a second ago there had been a nobody, a crumpled sad thing awaiting the grave, Arachne beheld Athena herself.

“A contest.” Athena said. “One god is as well judged as another – you yourself cited Marsyas and Apollo. We, too, shall have a contest, a weaving contest – here, and why not right now?”

Arachne stuttered, monosyllabic, and said nothing.

Around the pair all else had halted completely – it was inconceivable that ordinary business continue in Athena’s presence. The crowd beheld her with undisguised fear.

Athena waved a hand. Two standing looms – empty frames awaiting fabric, each five-and-a-half feet tall – interspersed themselves into space, sucking away the air that had previously been there and pushing it to an unknowable immaterial oblivion.

“A…Alright. Fine. Fine!” Arachne stared up at the Olympian. “If nothing else, I’ll show you I’m no wallflower. I really do know what I’m doing. What are the rules?”

“Take care lest your agones become agonies…we will be using wool.” And two piles of wool violated the empty air, resting on little tables near the looms.

“And our tools?”

On the same small tables: the rushing of the air, the appearance of two spindles, their whorls richly decorated with gold dots.

“A day. You are free to go home if you wish, to sleep…but I would not recommend this. The subject: a tapestry, depicting any scene. We shall be judged by…a visitor who comes to the city tomorrow – someone who does not know who I am, and who will not be afraid to rule against me. We shall all be complicit, share that secret, then.” She looked at the crowd.

“I will prepare the materials for working. This contest is not intended to measure our efficiency in the preparatory aspects of the art.” She waved again; the preparation was done, the wool stretched across the loom and held in locks by large dangling stones, awaiting the exterior design.

Their task began with thread, attached to a shuttle, interweaved horizontally through the vertical strips of wool, and then pushed against them to seal the gap and create layers. As the pair worked, they would have to continually readjust the frame, comb the wool, and tighten the folds of the newer parts.

Arachne did not tire – motivated by a curious mixture of fear and rage, an intoxication of blood that coursed through her and instantly negated even the thought of nocturnal retirement; neither contestant spoke, and soon the crowd filtered away and the sun set on the empty market. Arachne by that point suffered from an ache in her back, and her upper arms throbbed. She sighed in the near darkness (lit only by two lanterns). Athena stopped her weaving.

“Being divine, I feel no exhaustion: this is an unfair advantage. I will rectify it…” And suddenly Arachne felt as if she had just awakened and risen from a long sleep on a goose-feather mattress.

“It is also given because you refused to return home.” Athena said, and Arachne nodded in her direction. Then there was silence again and they continued to weave.

After sunrise the works were done. Athena regained the countenance of the crone, and a middle-aged man journeying from Lebedos to Samos was summoned from his temporary lodgings to inspect the tapestries.

Athena had weaved the gods in all their glories, excepting herself out of humility.

Arachne had depicted those same figures (excluding Athena out of respect for their challenge) engaged in the lowest of human vices, without a speck of godliness in any of them; had anything holy deigned to touch the image she’d made, the figures depicted would have fought to possess it even for a moment as the Graeae did their single eye.

“Gods take mercy on me for saying this…but while its subject matter is repulsive, the latter, done by this younger lady here, is a superior work.” The man said. “I say, you wouldn’t happen to be…”

“My father is in Ephesus looking for a suitable husband.” Arachne said quickly.

The traveller was sent on his way and soon Athena’s countenance reasserted itself. And no sooner did she return to her dignified, immortal form, secretly abashed, than Arachne began crowing.

“Hah! I told you! I told you all, a thousand times! I said I could do it, surpass the gods, and now here. We. Are!”

“Allow me to see it, before you celebrate.” Athena said.

And so the goddess approached the impious weave she had made.

“I can find no flaws of technique. But…I cannot allow this to stand unmolested! An insult to everything! To the very order of the universe!”

What made it such an abomination? She was not above acknowledging her family’s foibles. It was the perfection of Arachne’s technique being used to depict a universe structurally imperfect that attacked the core of her self – an unforgiveable mathematical impossibility, an equation that simply did not match.

Before Arachne could speak, the goddess had closed in upon her.

Here was her enemy: and here was the blasphemous canvas behind her infecting Athena’s vision, and for a few moments (her perfect face maimed by rage) the pigment filled her with the anger of ankle-bit Achilles and a terrible black weight descended on everything in the world. She desired nothing more than to become the strongest and most brutish of universal intents, to embody the onset of violent rapine death, a harsh grinding-down to nothing; pride would allow her nothing less than to leave the weaver in a state beyond dead, a ragdoll, her spirit pummelled utterly, her corpse bloodied and maimed on the ground – in Athena’s whole mind nothing remained but thoughtless, heart-tearing blindness, wordless, evil force. All her godly self was brought to bear and Arachne cowered both at the blows, and at the burning of the immortal soul above.

But before the weaver was obliterated, some flicker of Athena’s mediated self returned, and suddenly the grey-eyed goddess regained control. But she had given three good blows: Arachne laid unconscious, and a dark red pigment stained the marble around her.

No shock registered on Athena’s face – her usual aquiline, flawless, mathematical perfection of expression reasserted itself. The onlookers-who had progressed beyond fear-gazed at her neutrality, her psychopathic switch from world-ending anger to utter imperturbability, and rather than murmur among themselves, as they would have if confronted by a mortal, they merely recognised that a change had taken place, and waited without breath.

Athena waved a hand, and Arachne’s injuries were healed as if never inflicted. She lay on the ground still, in healthy sleep.

Athena approached the canvas, taking up her spindle. With a movement that could have cleaved a man’s head in half, she rent the offending tapestry and the loom along with it, and the structure clattered against the marble. Without turning around, the goddess disappeared.

Some minutes passed in silence. Then Arachne awoke swiftly, screaming, and upon discovering herself unharmed and surrounded by concerned people, began to sob, inconsolable. “A shame, a shame, a terrible thing. Oh, what remains for me now? By a goddess…”

“But there’s nothing wrong with you. Surely you can recover…”

“No, no. I, insult Her again? I could never…”

Athena, still deeply discomfited by the illogical blasphemy of the canvas, watched from somewhere among the clouds above.

“I could never weave again. Oh, leave me. Oh, go, go away. Begone.” Arachne began to shout. The crowd dispersed, and she stood, not even bothering to adjust her chiton. Then, seemingly filled with purpose, she began walking in the direction of Idmon’s house. Returning to her studio, the weaver procured a wooden stool and a piece of thick rope. She positioned the stool; the rope was formed into a noose and tied around a rafter – all preparations were accomplished with a deceptive, sea-like calm.

“One last weave, then. I am sorry…”

She held the rope in her hands, balanced atop the stool, waiting for something.

“Pride. And what is pride, but the kicking and screaming of the damned? You are immortal, you are made right by mere time. So I give up the fight, and all other fights. Oh, Fates, make me a careless shade, remove this shame…this shadow.”

A final vocal tremor, and then a kick, choking, a royal purple hue about the face – like one of Idmon’s dyes.

Blackness of vision, and a sudden gust of final wind…

“No, no!” Athena suddenly shouted, appearing in the studio. “It is not right. I recant this. You are human, and full of faults – much like a god – no god could claim otherwise…least of all myself. There is no true shame here. Only the same foolishness as all of us. An inaccuracy is no cause for death.”

She waved a hand at the corpse. Something fell from her fingers – a dust, a powder of Hecate.

“Weave again, at least.”

The corpse’s hair fell out, her arms fused to her sides; Arachne’s body shrank and turned black, her face disappeared in a liquid shift, and after a few seconds she hung alive again from the rope, now a slender silver thread: the world’s first spider.

And Athena the Weaver-goddess looked at it and was pleased again.

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