“Oh, how can I live,” she cried, “now that I must never again use loom or spindle or distaff?”

And she kept on, weeping and weeping and weeping, and saying, “How can I live?”

Then, when Athena saw that the poor maiden would never have any joy unless she were allowed to spin and weave, she took pity on her and said: 

“I would free you from your bargain if I could, but that is a thing which no one can do.  You must hold to your agreement never to touch loom or spindle again.  And yet, since you will never be happy unless you can spin and weave, I will give you a new form so that you can carry on your work with neither spindle nor loom.”

Then she touched Arachne with the tip of the spear which she sometimes carried; and the maiden was changed at once into a nimble spider, which ran into a shady place in the grass and began merrily to spin and weave a beautiful web.

I have heard it said that all the spiders which have been in the world since then are the children of Arachne; but I doubt whether this be true.  Yet, for aught I know, Arachne still lives and spins and weaves; and the very next spider that you see may be she herself.

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THE LORD OF THE SILVER BOW.

I. Delos.

Long before you or I or anybody else can remember, there lived with the Mighty Folk on the mountain top a fair and gentle lady named Leto.  So fair and gentle was she that Jupiter loved her and made her his wife.  But when Juno, the queen of earth and sky, heard of this, she was very angry; and she drove Leto down from the mountain and bade all things great and small refuse to help her.  So Leto fled like a wild deer from land to land and could find no place in which to rest.  She could not stop, for then the ground would quake under her feet, and the stones would cry out, “Go on! go on!” and birds and beasts and trees and men would join in the cry; and no one in all the wide land took pity on her.

One day she came to the sea, and as she fled along the beach she lifted up her hands and called aloud to great Neptune to help her.  Neptune, the king of the sea, heard her and was kind to her.  He sent a huge fish, called a dolphin, to bear her away from the cruel land; and the fish, with Leto sitting on his broad back, swam through the waves to Delos, a little island which lay floating on top of the water like a boat.  There the gentle lady found rest and a home; for the place belonged to Neptune, and the words of cruel Juno were not obeyed there.  Neptune put four marble pillars under the island so that it should rest firm upon them; and then he chained it fast, with great chains which reached to the bottom of the sea, so that the waves might never move it.

By and by twin babes were born to Leto in Delos.  One was a boy whom she called Apollo, the other a girl whom she named Artemis, or Diana.  When the news of their birth was carried to Jupiter and the Mighty Folk on the mountain top, all the world was glad.  The sun danced on the waters, and singing swans flew seven times round the island of Delos.  The moon stooped to kiss the babes in their cradle; and Juno forgot her anger, and bade all things on the earth and in the sky be kind to Leto.