Editing Arachne (section)

=== Other attestations ===
An ancient [[Ancient Corinth|Corinth]]ian [[aryballos]] dating to the sixth-century BC has been suggested to depict the weaving contest of Athena and Arachne, which would make it the earliest attestation of the myth if accurate.<ref>{{cite book | location = United States | isbn = 978-1-78297-663-9 | title = Athenian Potters and Painters | volume = III | first = John | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=EV7dCQAAQBAJ | date = August 31, 2014 | publisher = [[Oxbow Books]] | last = Oakley | page = [https://books.google.com/books?id=EV7dCQAAQBAJ&pg=PA99 99]}}</ref><ref>{{cite object | title = Aryballos with a representation of the myth about the battle between Arachne and Athena | last = Unknown | medium = Clay | dimensions = | orig-date = 580-560 BC | museum = [[Archaeological Museum of Ancient Corinth]] | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20231004070809/https://www.corinth-museum.gr/collection-item/αρύβαλλος-με-παράσταση-του-μύθου-της-α/ | archive-date = 2023-10-04 | url-status = dead | location = [[Corinth]], [[Greece]] | url = https://www.corinth-museum.gr/en/collection-item/aryballos-with-a-representation-of-the-myth-about-the-battle-between-arachne-and-athena/ | access-date = June 4, 2023}}</ref> However it has been noted that this interpretation is not an indisputable one, and the aryballos could be just depicting Athena teaching the art of weaving to the people, with no relation to Arachne whatsoever.<ref>{{cite journal | title = Αρχαιολογικά Ανάλεκτα εξ Αθηνών | language = Greek | publisher = General Directorate of Antiquities and Restoration | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=-Aw0olYBkBsC | journal = Athens Annals of Archaeology | volume = 3-4 | date = 1971 | page = [https://books.google.com/books?id=-Aw0olYBkBsC&pg=PA95 95]}}</ref>

Meanwhile, the earliest written attestation of an Arachne who clashed with Athena comes courtesy of [[Virgil]], a Roman poet of the first century BCE who wrote that the spider is hated by Athena but did not explain the reason why.<ref>[[Virgil]], ''[[Georgics]]'' 4.246 ff</ref> [[Pliny the Elder]] wrote that Arachne had a son, Closter (meaning "spindle" in Greek), by an unnamed father, who invented the use of the spindle in the manufacture of wool.<ref>[[Pliny the Elder]], ''[[Natural History (Pliny)|Natural History]]'' 7.196</ref>

In a rarer version, Arachne was a girl from [[Attica]] who was taught by Athena the art of weaving, while her brother [[Phalanx (mythology)|Phalanx]] was taught instead martial arts by the goddess. But then the two siblings engaged in incestuous intercourse, so Athena, disgusted, changed them both into spiders, animals doomed to be devoured by their own young.<ref>{{cite book | title = A Web of Fantasies: Gaze, Image, and Gender in Ovid's Metamorphoses | first = Patricia B. | last = Salzman-Mitchell | publisher = [[Ohio State University Press]] | date = 2005 | ISBN = 0-8142-0999-8 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=Sfz9GZIYPcsC | page = [https://books.google.com/books?id=Sfz9GZIYPcsC&pg=PA228 228]}}</ref>

The satirical writer [[Lucian]], around the second century AD, wrote in his [[List of works by Lucian|work]] ''The Gout'' that the "Maeonian maid Arachne thought herself Athene's match, but she lost her shape and still today must spin and spin her web".<ref>{{cite book | page = [https://www.loebclassics.com/view/lucian-gout/1967/pb_LCL432.355.xml 318-319] | author = Lucian | author-link = Lucian | title = Soloecista. Lucius or The Ass. Amores. Halcyon. Demosthenes. Podagra. Ocypus. Cyniscus. Philopatris. Charidemus. Nero. | translator = M. D. MacLeod | series = [[Loeb Classical Library]] 432 | location = Cambridge, MA | publisher = [[Harvard University Press]] | date = 1967}}</ref>