Arachnea: Once upon a time there was a very skilled weaver who made the mistake of believing her own publicity. She got so carried away, she once bragged she was better than the goddess Athena. 1 Well, Athena shows up and is all like, “Alright then, you think you’re so hot, let’s just have a contest and find out.” And Arachnea is all like, “It was just a figure of speech, it didn’t mean anything.” She wanted to back down, but by that time it’s too late. You might think a god has better things to do than challenge humans to contests, but it was the middle of the week and a light work day. So they have a contest, and guess who wins? Well, duh. Arachnea was just using ordinary silk, but Athena had special thread you can only get on Olympus and you can’t find in stores. So then Athena is like, “Since you love weaving so much, I’ll let you weave forever.” And Athena changes Arachnea into a spider which is where we get the word arachnid, you can check it out in the dictionary, and from that day to this, Arachnea weaves her beautiful silken webs. 2
1. Stop me if you've heard this one before.
2. The part about eating bugs Athena threw in for free.
