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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. Metamorphosis. Book 6,
lines 5-54, 129-145.
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/ar173gpl/
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