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for a hint to her presumptuous rival, prating girls changed to screeching fowl. Round all ran a border of olive foliage, as sign of whose handiwork this was, with which few would dare to vie !
"The irreverent Arachne, for her part, had picked cut stories that cast shame or derision upon the gods. Zeus and his brethren were seen wooing mortals in unworthy form, Appollo humbly serving, as a shepherd on earth, Dionysus playing his drunken pranks, nay, scandalous memories of old Cronos himself............all enclosed by a border of ivy leaves and flowers. But these scenes were worked in with so cunning art, that one could believe to see real animals and real waves standing out before the eye upon that accusing web, the more offensive for its truth. So Pallas-Athene felt when she rose to examine the other's work. With a cry......... ..she snatched at the too faithfully coloured cloth, tearing it to pieces, and showering blows upon the sly maker of such a masterpiece.
"How might mortal maiden stand before the fairhaired goddess when her eyes blazed with wrath? Thus unfairly beaten, Arachne could not bear her spiteful shame. She stole away to hang herself in despair. Nor even then was the wrath of Pallas glutted. She bid her rival live, yet in what hateful form! For a spell was woven round her bloated body, her human features disappeared, her hair fell off, her limbs shrunk up, and thus poor Arachne hung as a spider, doomed for ever to spin as if mocking the skill that had moved Olympian envy."
*The Classic Myth and Legend, by A. R. Hope Moncrieff.
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