ART HISTORY ADVENT CALENDAR - DAY 12

 Week of Power

12th of December - The Spinners (Arachne and Athena)

Everytime I see you use your webs

to catch small prey insects,

I think you as a human girl had aimed for bigger prey,

the grandest of them all.

You had the gall... No, the GUTS

to portray my Lord Father and all other Olympians

warts and all on your tapestry,

with their affairs and the ensuing scandals.

Why did I say I won? To uphold decency?

No, it was green-eyed envy because

a goddess hadn't dared to take those potshots

and a human had been bold, brave, by far, to do it.

I was wrong, Arachne.

If you can still hear me in that tiny eight-legged form...

I say I retract my victory. You win.

E.R. EDDISON ON CLASSICAL GODS

 Like a lily, or like a moonbeam strayed through the leafy roof into a silent wood, she stood there, her face uplifted to the starry night where all the air was drenched with the silver radiance of the moon. And now in a soft voice she began supplication to the Gods which are from everlasting, calling upon them in turn by their holy names, upon gray-eyed Pallas, and Apollo, and Artemis the fleet Huntress, upon Aphrodite, and Hera, Queen of Heaven, and Ares, and Hermes, and the dark-tressed Earthshaker. Nor was she afraid to address her holy prayers to him who from his veiled porch beside Acheron and Lethe Lake binds to his will the devils of the under-gloom, nor to the great Father of All in Whose sight time from the beginning until to-day is but the dipping of a wand into the boundless ocean of eternity. So prayed she to the blessed Gods, most earnestly requiring them that under their countenance might be that ride, the like whereof earth had not known [...]

E.R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros.