Why is Arachne a spider? (Ovid, Metamorphoses 6.129-45)

This essay presents an alternative reading of the transformation of Arachne, with implications for the interpretation of the episode as a whole. On the basis of what Minerva herself says before sprinkling Arachne with the transformative elixir, and of the elixir’s effects as Ovid describes them, I argue that the spider’s weaving can be read not as the culmination of Arachne’s punishment but as an act of defiant self-assertion on her part; that the ‘poetic justice’ Minerva had in mind centered not on Arachne’s weaving but on the challenge Arachne presents via her transgression of gender norms; and that this challenge is reformulated but not abandoned by Arachne the spider