So, lately I’ve been finding myself feeling… annoyed with very modern reimaginings of Greek myths being presented as like the “secretly TRUE versions of the myths before they were warped by the patriarchy.”
Like, I don’t really have an issue with #GirlBoss Persephone retellings (even if I find them a bit tired because they so often have to rely on villifying Demeter to do so.) But to act like that very modern interpretation of the character and story has any basis in the classical sources is just untrue, and it is frustrating because it refuses to engage with the difficult or uncomfortable aspects of stories that are 3000 years old. It refuses to engage with the cultural differences and history of these stories that still find ways to speak to us today. Instead it just seeks to sanitize and erase the bits that don’t fit into our modern sensibilities.
But the one that *really* gets me is Medusa. Because as modern audiences, the idea that Medusa being turned into a monster was *punishment* by Athena for being *raped* by Poseidon is really upsetting. And I’ve seen people legitimately try to say that *actually* Athena would never do that. Athena was actually *protecting* Medusa by making her a monster so that she wouldn’t be assaulted again. #feminism
But HERES THE THING- the entire idea that Medusa was transformed by Athena after being raped? COMES FROM FUCKING OVID.
(Ovid is a Roman writer who HEAVILY REIMAGINED the Greek myths in Metamorphoses because he was working with a Roman world view and political agenda.)
All EARLIER classical (and actually Greek) sources have Medusa being *born a Gorgon.* (whether the Gordons as a rule are beautiful or monsterous varies, and Hesoid does mention in the Theogny that Poseidon and Medusa had a thing, but he doesn’t describe it as rape. But that they “lay in a meadow of soft flowers”, and theres no description of her being transformed because of this.)
So like.
No.
no.
Obviously, the idea that there is some “true” Canon Orthodox version of these myths just…isn’t true. That’s just not how that worked.
But no. There is no classical support for any of that.
Thanks.
Side note- speaking of myths that have Athena just wildly lashing out at people- Ovid also may have just… invented the myth of Arachne.
We have 1 reference to Arachne that predates Ovid, from Virgil (Also Roman), and he doesn’t name her. “The spider, hateful to Minerva, hangs in the doorway her loose-woven nets.”
There is no surviving earlier Greek references or even Greek art depicting Arachne at all, at least that I can find reference to. 🤷♀️
Which, again, there is no “Greek Mythology Orthodoxy” or anything. Buuuuuuut.
So I just want to let yall know how deep of a rabbit hole I have fallen down.
So here is the question- did Ovid, or at least Romans around Ovids time if not Ovid directly, invent the myth of Arachne? Does it have any basis in Greek oral tradition at all?
And the answer seems to be…we have no idea. The lack of art seems particularly weird to me, right?
But like, ok, I found 1 website (a museum IN GREECE) that claims to have 1 vase from 500BCE which depicts the myth of Arachne.
But this is the vase.
Here is a scan of that image
… why has this been identified as Arachne and Athena? One of the women is larger (the one they have identified as Athena) but she doesn’t have any of Athenas traditional iconography- the helmet the shield, even an owl. Anything. And why is that Arachne? There’s no spiders, and the tapestry isn’t detailed enough for illustrations to be seen. Unless I’m missing something, this is just a scene of 2 women weaving. Maybe with some funky proportions. Why not say it is Penelope and one of her slave girls? Or anyone else? Weaving was pretty popular.
But this isn’t a well known or well studied piece. And I’m not an archeologist. What do I know?
But having proof of the Arachne myth from a Greek source in 500BCE would be super interesting, yeah?
So. What do you do when you’re hyper-fixating at 11:30pm on an unknowable historical question?
I emailed the museum and asked.
I’ll let you know if I find anything interesting.
So it’s been a few months, and…to the best of my knowledge, this is just where we stand on this.
The museum never got back to me. I posed this question to a classics professor on TikTok who said basically the same thing - the references from Virgil and this specific vase seem to imply that there was *some* version of the myth that existed before Ovid.
But even he was like “…yeah, they are identifying this vase as Arachne but… it seems a bit speculative.”
He also added that Arachne having a Greek name, not a Latin one, makes it more likely that Ovid was adapting something rather than just making it up himself (since he otherwise might have just used a Latin name?)
So. Unless someone digs up another villa or temple at some point and finds new evidence…. this is just… the state of things.
Which is kind of frustrating, but still very cool. If anything, it kinda hammers home HOW we, as modern audiences, know about these myths, how much of that tradition has been lost to time, and how we always need to be thoughtful about our sources and what assumptions we make based on them.
I find the assumption this weaving scene represents the competition of Athena and Arachne odd, to say the least, so I did some research.
Here is the description of Object CP 2038 by Gladys Davidson Weinberg and Saul S. Weinberg (1956):
See also: Williams, Charles Kaufman, J. Lawrence Angel, Peter Burns, and Joan E. Fisher. “Corinth, 1972: The Forum Area.” Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens 42, no. 1 (1973): p. 13. https://doi.org/10.2307/147469.
woman to rt., weaving at vertical loom; long hair to below waist, wearing chiton and necklace; holds 2 rods. At rt. 2nd woman facing lt., standing on stool (?) with shorter hair, unbelted garment, holding 2 forked tools against loom. Loom: 2 uprights and horizontal cross-bar, loomweights holding warp threads, length of woven cloth at top with incised cross-hatching. Surface damaged to rt. of her: 3rd woman facing lt., possibly holding loomweights; 4th woman, very tall facing rt.; small 5th woman facing 4th; behind, 2nd loom like 1st.
As OP notes, there’s nothing in this scene to relate it to the contest between Arachne and Athena. There are two looms and five women weaving, one of whom is apparently a child who has to stand on a stool to reach the weft.
Also, an aryballos is a container for perfume. It’s hard to understand why such an object would be decorated with a cautionary tale, but makes better sense if the decoration is a domestic scene of women of various ages performing the normal household task of weaving.
I think that the Weinberg’s interpretation of this scene is inaccurate.
I checked a few websites (the perseus.tufts.edu Art & Archaeology Artifact Browser, The Beazley Archive Pottery Database, the British Museum, and Wikimedia Commons - okay, not exhaustive, but still) and the only ancient depiction of the contest I could find is a frieze of Arachne and Minerva from the Forum of Nerva (built 85 - 97 C.E):
If it’s any consolation, I emailed a museum to ask about a particular object several years ago (it had been repatriated from the Getty and I was hoping they a photo) and never heard back from them, either.
