Arachne
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Arachne. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a-rak'ne, in Greek legend, a Lydian maiden who presumed to compete with Minerva in the art of weaving. As a punishment, she was changed into a spider. The story has been told by the Latin Ovid in a poem entitled The Punishment of Arachne. Edmund Spenser has retold the tale in Muiopotmos, from which the following stanzas are quoted: Amongst these leaves she made a butterfly With excellent device and wondrous slight, Fluttering among the olives wantonly, That seemed to live, so like it was in sight; The velvet nap which on his wings doth lie, The silken down with which his back is dight, His broad outstretched horns, his hairy thighs, His glorious colors, and his glistening eyes. Which, when Arachne saw, as overlaid And mastered with workmanship so rare She stood astonished long, ne aught gainsaid; And with fast-fixed eyes on her did stare And by her silence, sign of one dismayed, The victory did yield her as her share; Yet did she inly fret and felly burn, And all her blood to poisonous rancor turn. Garrick has also alluded to Arachne in a short poem, Upon a Lady's Embroidery: Arachne once, as poets tell, A goddess at her art defied, And soon the daring mortal fell The hapless victim of her pride. Oh, then, beware Arachne's fate; Be prudent, Chloe, and submit, For you'll most surely meet her hate. Who rival both her art and wit. See Spider ; Tapestry
1000 Classical Characters (1900)
A Lydian maiden, daughter of Idmon of Colophon, a famous dyer in purple. Arachne excelled in the art of weaving, and, proud of her talent, ventured to challenge Athena (Minerva) to compete with her. The maiden produced a piece of cloth in which the amours of the gods were woven, and as the goddess could find no fault with it, she tore the work to pieces. Arachne, in despair, hung herself; Athena loosened the rope and saved her life, but the rope was changed into a cobweb, and Arachne herself into a spider. This fable seems to suggest that man learned the art of weaving from the spider, and that it was invented in Lydia.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The myth itself stands exactly as these entries tell it: Ovid's version in Book VI of the Metamorphoses (the poem Aiton's calls "The Punishment of Arachne") remains the source for everything we know about the Lydian weaver. What has faded is the euhemerist guess offered by 1000 Classical Characters in 1900, that "man learned the art of weaving from the spider, and that it was invented in Lydia"; scholars now read the tale as a story about art, authority and punishment rather than a garbled memory of technology's origins, and feminist critics since the 1980s have made Arachne a figure for the artist who tells inconvenient truths about power. Her name meanwhile became permanent zoological vocabulary, in the class Arachnida and in the everyday word arachnophobia.
Written for this edition, 2026.