Arachne

In Greco-Roman mythology, Arachne (/əˈrækniː/; from Greek: ἀράχνη, cognate with Latin araneus) was a mortal woman and talented weaver who challenged Athena, goddess of wisdom and crafts, and was transformed into a spider. Spiders are called arachnids after Arachne.

Versions

There are three versions of this story, one in which Arachne loses and two in which she wins although is turned into an arachnid anyway for her insolence.

Ovid's version

One version appears in the Metamorphoses of the Roman poet Ovid.

In this version, Arachne was a shepherd's daughter who began weaving at an early age. She became a great weaver, boasted that her skill was greater than that of Athena, and refused to acknowledge that her skill came, in part at least, from the goddess. Athena took offense and set up a contest between them. Presenting herself as an old lady, she approached the boasting girl and warned: "You can never compare to any of the gods. Plead for forgiveness and Athena might spare your soul."

"Ha! I only speak the truth and if Athena thinks otherwise then let her come down and challenge me herself," Arachne replied. Athena removed her disguise and appeared in shimmering glory, clad in a sparkling white chiton. The two began weaving straight away. Athena's weaving represented four separate contests between mortals and the gods in which the gods punished mortals for setting themselves as equals of the gods. Arachne's weaving depicted ways that the gods had misled and abused mortals, particularly Zeus, tricking and seducing many women. When Athena saw that Arachne had not only insulted the gods, but done so with a work far more beautiful than Athena's own, she was enraged. She ripped Arachne's work into shreds, and sprinkled her with Hecate's potion, turning her into a spider and cursing her and her descendants to weave for all time. This showed how goddesses punished those who were mortal.

Arachne (disambiguation)

Arachne is a figure in Greek mythology. It may also refer to:

Arachne (Internet suite)

Arachne is a full-screen Internet suite containing a graphical web browser, email client, and dialer. Originally, Arachne was developed by Michal Polák under his xChaos label, a name he later changed into Arachne Labs. It was written in C and compiled using Borland C++ 3.1. Arachne has since been released under the GPL as Arachne GPL.

Arachne primarily runs on DOS-based operating systems, but includes builds for Linux as well. The Linux version relies on SVGALib and therefore does not require a display server.

Background

Arachne supports many file formats, protocols and standards including video modes from CGA 640×200 in monochrome to VESA 1024×768 in high color mode (65,536 colors). It is designed for systems that do not have any windowing systems installed.

Arachne supports multiple image formats including JPEG, PNG, BMP and animated GIF. It supports a subset of the HTML 4.0 and CSS 1.0 standards, including full support for tables and frames. Supported protocols include FTP, NNTP for USENET forums, POP3, SMTP and Gopher. Arachne includes a full-fledged TCP/IP connection suite, which has support for some dial-up and Ethernet connections. However, Arachne has no support for JavaScript,Java or SSL. Arachne can be expanded with the use of add-ons for such tasks as watching DivX movies, playing MP3 files, IRC chat, RSS and viewing PDF documents.

Arachne (archaeological database)

iDAI.objects arachne (short form: Arachne) is the central object-database (administrator: Reinhard Förtsch) of the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) and the the Cologne Digital Archaeology Laboratory (CoDArchLab) at the University of Cologne.

Arachne is intended to provide archaeologists and Classicists with a free internet research tool for quickly searching hundreds of thousands of records on objects and their attributes. This combines an ongoing process of digitizing traditional documentation (stored on media which are both threatened by decay and largely unexplored) with the production of new digital object and graphic data. Wherever possible, Arachne follows a paradigm of highly structurized object-metadata which is mapped onto the CIDOC-CRM, to address machine-readable metadata strategies of the Semantic Web. This »structured world« of Arachne requires high efforts in time and money and therefore is only possible for privileged areas of data. While on the ever-increasing range of new, digital born data in reality only a small effort-per-object ratio can be applied. It therefore requires a “low-threshold” processing structure which is located in the »unstructured world« of Arachne. All digital (graphic and textual) information is secure on a Tivoli Storage System (featuring long-term multiple redundancy) and distributed online through the Storage Area Network in Cologne.

Julia Carpenter

Julia Carpenter (born Julia Cornwall) is a fictional superheroine appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character was initially known as the second Spider-Woman, later as the second Arachne, and then as the second Madame Web. The character first appeared in Secret Wars vol. 1 #6 (in the shadows).

In 2012, Julia Carpenter was listed as #47 on IGN's "Top 50 Avengers".

Publication history

As Spider-Woman, Carpenter has appeared as a starring character in Avengers West Coast and Force Works as well as a supporting character in the third Spider-Woman series, whose main character was Mattie Franklin. While she frequently appears as a member of a team, such as the Avengers West Coast and Force Works, Julia starred in her own four-part Spider-Woman miniseries which explained her origin and the origin of her enemies, Death Web.

Fictional character biography

A secretive government group called The Commission decided to create their own superhero. Val Cooper met college friend Julia Carpenter in Julia's hometown of Denver, and convinced her to be part of an "athletic study". She was unknowingly a test subject in their experiments. During the experiment, they "accidentally" injected Julia with a mix of spider venom and exotic plant extracts, which gave Julia powers very similar to those of Spider-Man.

List of Soul Eater characters

The Soul Eater manga and anime series features an extensive cast of fictional characters created by Atsushi Ōkubo. It is set in a fictional universe inhabited by various characters capable of using supernatural powers by channeling the wavelengths of their souls. Most of the characters in the series, including the main protagonists, are classified into two groups: humans who are born with the power to turn into weapons, called demon weapons, and the wielders of these weapons, called meisters. The main protagonists attend a school called Death Weapon Meister Academy—DWMA for short—located in the fictional Death City in Nevada, United States. DWMA is run by Lord Death, the Grim Reaper, as a training facility for weapons and meisters to hone their powers, as well as an organization to preserve world order against anyone who threatens it, including witches, monsters and evil demon gods called kishin.

The main Soul Eater manga and its anime adaptation follow three meister/weapon partnerships—Maka Albarn and her scythe Soul Eater; Black Star and his shadow weapon Tsubaki Nakatsukasa; and Death the Kid and his twin pistols, Liz and Patty Thompson—who act as field agents for their school and reap the souls of evil humans to prevent them from turning into kishin. The spin-off prequel manga titled Soul Eater Not!, also created by Ōkubo, follows the everyday lives of three other DWMA students—halberd Tsugumi Harudori and her two meister friends, Meme Tatane and Anya Hepburn.