In her elegant and erudite paper, “A New Web for Arachne,”[615] Sarah Iles Johnston has teased out an extraordinary web of significations from a brief epitome of the story of Arachne and Phalanx.

Johnston begins with a scholion to Nicander’s Theriaca, a didactic poem about dangerous animals and cures for their stings and bites. In commenting on Nicander’s use of the word φαλάγγια (venomous spiders), the scholiast recounts a story told by Theophilus of the School of Zenodotus.

And Theophilus, of the School of Zenodotus, relates that there once were two siblings in Attica: Phalanx, the man, and the woman, named Arachne. While Phalanx learned the art of fighting in arms from Athena, Arachne learned the art of weaving. They came to be hated by the goddess, however, because they had sex with each other - and their fate was to be changed into creeping creatures that are eaten by their own children.^[616]

Before commencing her interpretation of this story, Johnston explains the term “affordance,” which is critical to her analysis.^[617] Central to the idea of an affordance is the observation that the raw characteristics of any object or behavior only acquire meanings in their relationship to the perceptions and capacities of particular agents. For instance, a stick has certain physi­cal characteristics - its straightness, its particular length, its tapering tip, etc. - but it may only be understood as “good to dig ants out of a hole with” by an actor with the requisite motor skills and the cognitive capacity to conceive such an activity. The same stick could simultaneously be per­ceived as a scepter or a weapon, depending on the actor in question.

The term “affordance,” coined by the perceptual psychologist J. J. Gib­son, was adapted by classicist Maurizio Bettini for studying cultural phe­nomena in general and, in particular, for analyzing human reactions to an­imal characteristics.^[618] So, for instance, the fact that weasels carry their young in their mouths “is an affordance that gave rise to the ancient belief that weasels gave birth through their mouths.” And weasels’ ability to slip through narrow spaces was an affordance that led to their reputation as helpers of women in labor.

The usefulness of the concept of “affordance,” for Bettini and for John­ston, lies in the fact that, whereas symbols tend to have a static meaning (the lily, having become associated with purity in Christian thought, sym­bolizes Mary), affordances may include a range of meanings - even mean­ings that appear quite dissimilar. This capacity is critical for considering the spider and its web: “Whereas our usual understanding of the word ‘symbol’ makes it hard to say that the spider ‘symbolizes’ both vicious predation and helpfulness, the concept of affordances allows the possibil­ity that both meanings might be evoked within a single cultural produc- tion.”^[620]

What, then, were the affordances of spiders in the ancient world? And what meanings were ascribed to them? Johnston notes three affordances of the spider widely attested among ancient authors. First, the most frequently noted affordance of the spider was its ability to spin fiber and weave webs. The spider’s capacity to weave was frequently taken as an image of indus­triousness;^[621] but the spider web itself was also an image of neglect (i.e., the absence of human attention), transience, and decay. Second, as Theophi­lus’s story attests (the fate of Arachne and Phalanx is to be eaten by their own children), spiders were believed to kill - and sometimes to eat - their parents. Naturally, this perceived tendency toward parricide was not liable to such diverse interpretations as the weaving of webs: it was unambigu­ously negative. What should be noted, though, is that there are other an­cient connections between parricide, incest, and cannibalism.

Returning to Theophilus’s story with these three affordances in mind (the ability to spin and weave; the habit of parricide and cannibalism; a lustful nature), Johnston notes that the ability to weave, in particular, urges us to press beyond simply reading the episode as one in which the punish­ment fits the crime (sexual transgression in the family followed by the transformation of the transgressors into hyper-sexual creatures who will be devoured by their own children). Building on the study of John Scheid and Jesper Svenbro,^[624] Johnston notes that weaving - characteristically wom­en’s work - was a common metaphor for two institutions central to the maintenance of society, namely, marriage and civic coalitions of potential­ly disparate families. The very mechanics of human weaving encouraged such a metaphor: the ostensibly opposite vertical (warp) and horizontal (woof) threads are brought together into something useful, sturdy, and new. Plato himself had developed weaving as a metaphor for crafting a city in the Statesman (279b1-283b), and he claimed that the fabric of society should begin by weaving together men and women whose disparate char­acteristics would yield the best citizens.

Plato’s metaphor reflected and invoked concrete civic occasions in which weaving played a part in the celebration of unity. When sixteen women of Elis persuaded their husbands to forego their warring and to re­turn to civic unity, they were granted the honor of weaving a new peplos

for Hera and of holding the Heraea¹ Similarly in Athens (recall that The­ophilus’s tale is set in Attica and Athena is the siblings’ teacher^{[625] [626]), at the culmination of the Panathenaia, a new peplos was dedicated to Athena. This peplos, woven by women and girls, depicted the victory of Athena and the other Olympians over the giants. Furthermore, the Panathenaia was allegedly founded by Theseus to commemorate the unification of the vil­lages of Attica. So yet again, we find weaving and the triumph of order over chaos brought into close connection. Weaving represents civilization.}

Johnston makes a further observation, namely that weaving was associ­ated with the transition from girlhood to womanhood; it marks a readiness for marriage. At the domestic level, “a bride took cloth that she had woven to her new home, to serve as the bed cover under which she would lie with her husband....”^[627] In the case of the women of Elis, Johnston notes that the Heraea honored Hera, the goddess of marriage; and the girls who par­ticipated in the games of the Heraea showed thereby their readiness for marriage. In Athens, girls called Arrhephoroi played a ritual role in the weaving of the peplos for Athena. Some of what we know about these Ar- rephoroi would seem to confirm the connection of weaving to the transi­tion to sexuality and marriage.

On a night at the end of their year-long service as Arrhephoroi, these girls were to carry a package from the priestess of Athena to the temple of Aphrodite; then the priestess of Aphrodite gave them a package to carry back. In the myth associated with this ritual, three daughters of Cecrops were told by Athena to guard a basket and not to peer into it.

Johnston ties these various threads together:

The most central Athenian festival and its accompanying myths, then, explore in depth some ideas that are more briefly articulated in the myth of Arachne and Phalanx as we have it from Theophilus: a young Athenian virgin (Arachne), whose tutelage by Athena implicitly makes her the representative of all Athenian virgins, embarks on learning one of the most important skills that she will need as a wife - weaving - but spoils her transi­tion by trying to acquire the other prerequisite of the wife - an introduction to sexuality - preemptively and with the wrong partner. The story of Arachne and Phalanx takes things a step further than the story of Cecrops’s daughters, however. The actions of Arachne and Phalanx contravene not only the rules of proper behavior for virgins but also the rules of proper civic behavior: a “marriage” that weaves together brother and sister com­pletely subverts the institution’s purposes as ancient sources articulated them: if a strong city is built upon the union of diversified families and a strong family is built upon the union of diversified spouses, then the union of siblings, by definition, weakens the fabric of both.^[629]

It was not immediately clear how best to compose a “response” to John­ston’s essay.

So in light of the fact that the honoree of these essays works on ancient Christianity and Judaism, it seemed that a good starting point might be to consider the treatment of this concatenation of images and rituals among ancient Christians and Jews. Some initial searches for references to spiders turned up a dispiritingly exiguous set of results. There are only two bibli­cal references to spider webs, neither particularly interesting.^[630] I found on­ly one rabbinic story in which a spider plays a leading role. In an effort to demonstrate that all creatures - even the lowly spider - have a purpose in God’s creation, it is alleged that the spider once saved David by weaving a covering over the cave in which he hid from Saul.^[631]

But ultimately Professor Johnston’s paper is not about spiders and webs so much as it is about the connections between weaving and the transition from girlhood to womanhood; the connection of weaving to sexuality and marriage, the joining together of men and women into new families, the joining of separate families into a sturdy polis. Now, as soon as one con­siders these themes in early Christianity - marriage, sexuality, being knit together into a civic whole - one thinks of the ways Christians neglected and even rejected such concerns. As Loveday Alexander has demonstrated in her contribution to this volume (“The Virgin and the Goddess: Women and Religion in Greek Romance”) a considerable number of Christian women and men renounced sexuality, either abstaining from sexual rela­tions in existing marriages or choosing not to marry at all.^[632] Many Chris­tian women rent the fabric of the family. The “lilies of the field” ceased to “spin” (Matt 6:28IILuke 12:27).^[633]

Already in the fifties of the first century, the apostle Paul had to address a community that wondered whether marriages - or even conjugal relations within marriages - were acceptable (1 Corinthians 7).^[634] Although Paul de­nies that either marriage or sexual activity is inherently sinful, his defense is decidedly anemic.^[635] What is most strikingly absent from Paul’s instruc­tion is any comment about the value of procreation, of starting new fami­lies, of the public duty of building a family and having children.^[636] Just how striking it is that he failed to mention children or city in a discussion about the propriety of marriage can be seen when we contrast Paul’s comments with those of his contemporary, Musonius Rufus.^{[637] [638] When Musonius ad­dresses a question similar to that occupying Paul in 1 Corinthians 7 - namely, “Is Marriage a Handicap for the Pursuit of Philosophy?” - Muso- nius places great importance on having children, and he frames this as a very public duty. At stake was nothing less than civilization itself: “[W]hoever destroys human marriage destroys the home, the city, and the whole human race” (Musonius Rufus 14 [Lutz 92.35-36]).}

This, in fact, is precisely what Christians seemed to be doing as they re­jected matrimony and procreation: destroying the city and the whole hu­man race.^[639] This forms a leitmotif in the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles.^[640] The relevant apostle appears in town and preaches a gospel of sexual re­nunciation; prominent women heed the message and desist relations with their husbands (or break off engagements); and the apostle is accused of bewitching the women and destroying society.^[641] In fact, the very first^{[642] [643] ref­erence to a “spider” in surviving Christian literature comes from the Acts of Paul and Thecla. Thecla’s mother informs Thecla’s fiance that the young woman has fallen under the spell of Paul’s encratite message:}

πάσαι γάρ αί γυναίκες- και οϊ νέοι εισέρχονται προς αυτόν, διδασκόμενοι παρ’αυτοΐι ότι Δεΐ, φησίν, ένα και μόνον θεόν φοβεΐσθαι και ζην άγνώς. ετι δε και ή θυγάτηρ μου ώς άράχνη έπι της θυρίδος δεδεμένη τόΐς υπ’αυτοΐι λόγοις κρατείται έπιθυμία καινή και πάθει δεινω. ατενίζει γάρ τοΐς λεγομένοις ϋπ’αυτοΰ καί εάλωται ή παρθένος.

All the women and young people go in to [Paul], and are taught by him. “You must” he says, “fear one single God only, and live chastely.” And my daughter also, who sticks to the window like a spider, is (moved) by his words (and) gripped by a new desire and a fearful passion; for the maiden hangs upon the things he says, and is taken captive. (Acts Paul 9) ⁰

Here both the spider’s lustful nature and its affordance of hanging at a window create an apt simile.^[644] Thecla is like a spider in that she has come under the grip of a new “lust” even as she renounces sexuality and mar­riage. (This, of course, is not the only instance in which Thecla’s attach­ment to Paul is portrayed erotically.)^[645] Like Arachne in Theophilus’s story, her lust is abnormal, and ruinous both to her own family (witness her mother’s horror) and to the stability of society.^[646]

In reflecting further on the chief themes of Johnston’s paper - weaving as an activity connected to the transition from girlhood to womanhood; a skill showing female readiness for marriage and childbirth; a craft representing the joining together of disparate bodies so as to produce something new - it occurred to me that almost all of these are present in one form or another in the story of the Virgin Mary’s birth, maturation, and betrothal to Joseph as told in the second-century text known as the Protevangelium of James.^[647]

According to the Protevangelium, Mary is born to a barren couple, An­na and Joachim, in a manner reminiscent of Samuel’s birth to Hannah and Elkanah (Prot. Jas. 1; 1 Sam 1-2).^[648] Because the pregnancy is a gift from God,^[649] Mary, like Samuel, is to be dedicated to the temple (Prot. Jas. 4:1; 7; cf. 1 Sam 1:11). Mary is raised in the temple and fed by angels (8:1), but as her twelfth birthday approaches, the priests realize that they must find her a new home lest she defile the temple with the onset of menstruation (Prot. Jas. 8).^[650] Thus Mary’s sexual maturation - her transition to woman­hood - is foregrounded in the narrative. Furthermore, her physical devel­opment is connected to her readiness for marriage, for the high priest is advised by an angel to assemble the widowers of Israel, one of whom will be divinely chosen to be betrothed to Mary (Prot. Jas. 8:3). By a miracu­lous sign, the elderly Joseph is selected. But what will mark this transition from youth to betrothal in Mary’s case? Will she weave for Joseph? Will she and Joseph be knit together?

Needless to say, although Mary is both physically mature and engaged to Joseph, she does not join him sexually. In fact, the Protevangelium is as preoccupied as any early Christian text with demonstrating that Mary was never physically intimate with Joseph.^[651] For instance, the Protevangelium addresses how it was that Jesus had “brothers and sisters.” (Jesus’s siblings are mentioned - without any concern about whether Mary bore other chil­dren - in the letters of Paul [1 Cor 9:5] and in the gospels [Mark 6:3IIMatt 13:55; John 7:3]). According to the Protevangelium, Jesus’s “siblings” are in fact step-siblings, the children of the widower Joseph from his prior marriage (Prot. Jas. 9:2).^[652] And Mary’s virginal conception of Jesus is stressed (some might say belabored) throughout the central portion of the narrative. Not only do she and Joseph swear repeatedly that they have had no relations, but they even successfully undergo trial by ordeal (cf. Prot. Jas. 13-16; cf. Num 5:11-31). Finally, the Protevan-gelium takes pains to show that Mary’s hymen remained intact despite her having given birth. When Mary’s companion Salome doubts the midwife’s report that a virgin had given birth to a child, she insists on inspecting Mary’s $uoi$^[653] with her hand, only to have it catch fire as punishment for her disbelief (Prot. Jas. 19-20). Salome is subsequently forgiven and her hand restored, but the point has been forcefully made: Mary has had no natural relations with Joseph; this has been no typical birth;^[654] Mary “is still a virgin.”^[655]

But despite this strenuous disavowal that Mary has in any way been knit to Joseph - despite this denial that Mary has experienced sexual relations or even normal childbirth - Mary does begin weaving at this point in her life. When Mary has turned twelve and been betrothed to Joseph, the priests resolve to make a veil for the temple and summon several virgins to sew it. Lots are cast to determine who shall weave the various colors of the veil, and “to Mary fell the lot of the ‘pure purple’ and ‘scarlet’” (10:2).^[656] Just as Mary is to begin weaving she hears a voice declaring her “highly favored” and “blessed among women” (Prot. Jas. 11:1, combining the an­gelic annunciations of Luke 1:28 and 1:42). Then, still trembling with fear, Mary begins to weave. At this very moment an angel of the Lord appears and announces that she “shall conceive of his Word” (11:2). Mary, now pregnant (perhaps from the annunciation itself),^[657] returns to her weaving and ultimately brings her materials to the priest (12:1). Thus Mary’s work of weaving is unmistakably connected to the conception of a child. The ac­tivity in Mary’s womb and her own labor at the loom are concurrent, and they mark her transition to womanhood. As she begins to weave, some­thing is being woven inside of her.

Mary’s weaving for the temple was developed in later ecclesiastical art and preaching (e.g., medieval illustrations depict Mary at her loom).^[658] But more than anyone else in antiquity, it was Proclus, bishop of Constantino­ple from 434-446,^[659] who developed the image of God weaving inside of Mary as Mary wove for God. For Proclus, Mary’s womb (γαστηρ) was the “workshop” (εργαστηριον) in which stood the loom God used to unite divine and human nature. Mary was, Proclus said,

the awesome loom of the divine economy on which the robe of union was ineffably wo­ven. The loom-worker was the Holy Spirit; the wool-worker the “overshadowing power from on high” [cf. Lk. 1.35]. The wool was the ancient fleece of Adam; the interlocking thread [κρόκη] was the spotless flesh of the Virgin. The weaver’s shuttle [κερκίς·] was propelled by the immeasurable grace of him who wore the robe; the artisan was the Word who entered in through her sense of hearing... therefore do not rend the robe of the in­carnation which was “woven from above” [cf. John 19:23]. (Homily 1.I, 21-25)

Proclus’s rhetoric actually brings us full circle back to Johnston’s paper. Not only does he connect Mary’s “weaving” to the child being “knit” in her womb, but he even deploys the image of the spider: “Come and see the ‘unhewn rock’ [Dan 2:34] dangling miraculously in the virginal web [δεύτε ίδωμεν την άλατόμητον πέτραν έν τη παρθενικη άραχνη υπερφυών φερομενην]” (Hom. 4.I, 17-18).

Mary represents a turning point in the history of sexuality. Her transi­tion from maidenhood to marriage is no transition at all, at least in regard to sexual activity. Thus the very joining of God and humanity accom­plished in Mary’s womb marks a rupture in the joining of man to woman, of family to family. When Mary matures into a woman, she begins to weave; but she weaves for the temple, not for Joseph. Whereas Athenian women wove garments under which they would consummate their mar­riages, there would come a day when consecrated virgins would use a dif­ferent textile - the veil - to mark their “marriage” to Christ.^[660]

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