Sajun.org
'''Arachne''', or '''Arakhne''' was a woman from
Greek mythology. She was a fine weaver who began claiming that her skill was greater than
Athena's, the goddess of weaving (among other responsibilities).
Athena was angered, but gave Arachne a chance to redeem herself. Assuming the form of an old woman, she warned Arachne not to offend the gods. Arachne scoffed and wished for a weaving contest, so she could prove her skill. Athena dropped her disguise and the contest began.
Athena wove the scene of her victory over
Poseidon that inspired the people of
Athens to name their city for her. Arachne's tapestry featured
Zeus: Zeus being unfaithful with
Leda, Zeus being unfaithful with
Europa, Zeus being unfaithful with
Danae.
Even Athena admitted that Arachne's work was flawless, but was outraged at Arachne's disrespectful choice of subjects. Finally losing her temper, Athena destroyed her tapestry and loom, and struck Arachne on the head. Arachne realized her folly and was crushed with shame. She ran off and hanged herself.
Athena took pity on Arachne. Sprinkling her with the juices of
aconite, Athena resurrected her as a spider.
The
Greek word for
spider is ''arachne'' (αραχνη), from which derive the mythological woman's name, the
taxonomical class name
Arachnida, and the name for fear of spiders,
arachnophobia.
Ovid.
Metamorphoses. Book 6, lines 5-54, 129-145.
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'''Arachne''' is also the name of a free graphical
web browser which has very low hardware requirements and runs on
DOS and
Linux. It is available at
http://browser.arachne.cz/
The source code for '''Arachne''' has now been released under the
GPL, the updated
GPL version for
DOS is available at
http://www.cisnet.com/glennmcc/ar177gpl/
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