Hariharan Senthilkumar - Week 11: Athena and Free Speech

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In Greek mythology, there is a story of a girl who dared to challenge the goddess of wisdom and war, Athena. The story goes that there was once a weaver named Arachne, a weaver of such amazing skill that people believed her tapestries were quite literally divine. Everyone believed that Arachne must have been taught by the goddess of weaving, Athena, herself. 

Arachne was angry that people credited Athena for a talent that she had spent years perfecting by herself. So Arachne claimed that her weaving surpassed even those of Athena. So Athena descended at once from Olympus in the form of an old beggar woman.

Athena told Arachne that it was not right to insult the gods and that Arachne should be thanking the gods on bended knees for having such skill. Naturally, Arachne refused. Why should she thank gods who have never once helped her? Why should she give credit for her hard work to someone else? Arachne declared that if Athena was really so good at weaving, then they should have a contest and see who weaves better.

Athena shed her disguise and turned from an old beggar woman into a goddess, and the two weavers began their contest. Arachne wove an eye-catching tapestry of all the Olympian gods and their various crimes. The tapestry focused on Zeus’s lechery and rape though it included the various atrocities committed by other gods too. Athena wove a regal and gorgeous tapestry that showed the might and divinity of the gods and stories of the victories of Olympus.

Athena, though blinded by rage due to Arachne’s disrespect to the gods, had to admit that Arachne’s weaving was equal to her own. This did not stop Athena from turning Arachne into a spider. It is from this story we call spiders “arachnids”.

So what was the point of this myth? I think this story shows how power blinds people. Athena, a goddess, is clearly a sore loser. Had she not been immortal, she would have been viewed as petulant, childlike, and shockingly cruel. But she is a goddess, and because of that this story wasn’t told as a critique of Athena but as a warning: do not insult the gods. Ancient peoples would tell stories like this to show that we must respect the divinities, no matter what the stories say they did. 

I think this shows how human beings are so easily manipulated when it comes to people in power. It might be a stretch, but I believe that the fact that Athena was not considered the villain in this story is similar to how millions of people used to consider dictators as good people. When Hitler and Mussolini and others like them lived, there were droves of people who genuinely believed from the bottom of their hearts that these dictators meant well. Why? Because the dictators had power. For much of human history, power went unquestioned. Only recently did people have enough free speech to openly denounce their government without repercussions.

This is all to say that I think we should be aware of the influence power has over our speech. Never stay silent if the need arises to speak up. It does not matter who or what you are speaking against; if something or someone needs to be called out, even if they have positions of power or influence, you can call them out. There are not many moments in history where people could speak up when they wanted to, so now that we can speak up, we should not remain silent. Like how Arachne did not hesitate to call Athena out on her arrogance and pride, no one should hesitate to call out a mistake being made, even if a person in power is making it.