Marrying and loving, however, were two different affairs.  If Eros had the final decision, her choice might perhaps fall on one of the artists.

Here she was interrupted by the slave’s indignant exclamation:  “What contradictions!  ‘Woman’s hair is long, but her wit is short,’ says the proverb.  ‘Waiting is the merchant’s wisdom,’ I have heard your master say more than once, and to obey the words of shrewd people is the best plan for those who are not so wise.  Meanwhile, I am of the opinion that curiosity alone brought Daphne—­who, after all, is only a woman—­to this place.  She wants to see the statues of Demeter which her father ordered from us.”

“And the Arachne?” asked the maid.  This was an opportune question to the slave—­how often he had heard the artists utter the word “Arachne!”—­and his pride of education had suffered from the consciousness that he knew nothing about her except the name, which in Greek meant “the spider.”

Some special story must surely be associated with this Arachne, for which his master desired to use his young countrywoman, Ledscha, as a model, and whose statues Archias intended to place in his house in Alexandria and in the great weaving establishment at Tennis beside the statue of Demeter.

Stephanion, a Greek woman who grew up in a Macedonian household, must know something about her.

So he cautiously turned the conversation to the spinner Arachne, and when Stephanion entered into it, admitted that he, too, was curious to learn in what way the sculptors would represent her.

“Yes,” replied the maid, “my mistress has more than once racked her brains over that, and Archias too.  Perhaps they will carve her as a girl at work in the house of her father Idmon, the purple dyer of Colophon.”

“Never,” replied Bias in a tone of dissent.  “Just imagine how the loom would look wrought in gold and ivory!”

“I thought so too,” said Stephanion, in apology for the foolish idea.”  Daphne thinks that the two will model her in different ways:  Myrtilus, as mistress in the weaving room, showing with proud delight a piece just completed to the nymphs from the Pactolus and other rivers, who sought her at Colophon to admire her work; but Hermon, after she aroused the wrath of Athene because she dared to weave into the hangings the love adventures of the gods with mortal women.”

“Father Zeus as a swan toying with Leda,” replied Bias as confidently as if Arachne’s works were before his eyes, “and in the form of a bull bearing away Europa, the chaste Artemis bending over the sleeping Endymion.”

“How that pleases you men!” interrupted the maid, striking him lightly on the arm with the duster which she had brought from the tent.  “But ought the virgin Athene to be blamed because she punished the weaver who, with all her skill, was only a mortal woman, for thus exposing her divine kindred?”

“Certainly not,” replied Bias, and Stephanion went on eagerly:  “And when the great Athene, who invented weaving and protects weavers, condescended to compete with Arachne, and was excelled by her, surely her gall must have overflowed.  Whoever is just will scarcely blame her for striking the audacious conqueror on the brow with the weaver’s shuttle.”