Wonder Stories by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey (i have read the book TXT) 📕

"What design will Arachne embroider to-day?" asked one of the nymphs.

"You weave and sew as if the great Minerva herself had taught you her arts," a Nymph said timidly to Arachne.

The girl's face flushed with anger. It was true that the goddess Minerva who presided over the arts that women need to know, spinning, weaving and needlework, had taught Arachne her skill, but the girl was vain and always denied it.

"My skill is my own," she replied. "Let Minerva try to compete with me and if she is able to finish a rarer piece of work than mine, I am willing to pay any penalty."

It was a thoughtless, daring boast which Arachne had made. As she spoke the leaves of the trees fluttered, for the Nymphs, frightened at a mortal's presumption, were moving away from Arachne. She looked up and in their place saw an old dame standing beside her.

"Challenge your fellow mortals, my child," she said, "but do not try to compete with a goddess. You ought to ask Minerva's forgiveness for your rash words."

Arachne tossed her head in disdain.

"Keep your counsel," she replied, "for your hand-maidens. I know what I say and I mean it. I am not afraid of the goddess. I repeat it; let Minerva try her skill with mine if she dare venture."

"She comes!" said the old dame, dropping her disguise and appearing before Arachne in the shining silver mail of the goddess Minerva.

Arachne grew pale with fear at first, but her presumption overcame her fear. Her heart was full of her foolish conceit and she set a new piece of work on her loom as Minerva produced a second loom, and the contest began. They attached the web to the beam and began tossing their slender shuttles in and out of the threads. They pushed the woof up into place with their fine reeds until the fabric was compact. Then the needlework was begun.

Arachne, though, had decided to work something that was forbidden by the gods. She was going to use her skill of hand and all her art for evil instead of good.

She began embroidering a picture that would be displeasing to the gods, and she was able to make it seem as if it were alive, because of the figures and scenes she could outline with her needle and fill in with her colored wools. The picture Arachne embroidered was that of the fair Princess Europa tending her father's herds of cattle beside the sea. One of the bulls seemed so tame that Europa mounted his back, and he plunged into the sea with her and carried her far away from her native shores to Greece. Arachne pictured this bull as the great god Jupiter.

Minerva's embroidery was of a very different pattern from this. She was the goddess of wisdom and her gift from Mount Olympus to the earth had been the beautiful olive tree that gave mortals shade, and fruit, and oil, and wood for their building. Minerva stitched the pattern of a green olive tree on the tapestry she was embroidering.

Among the leaves of the olive tree Minerva embroidered a butterfly. It seemed to live and flutter in and out among the olives. One could almost touch the velvet nap that lay on its wings and the silk down which covered its back; there were its broad, outstretched horns, its gleaming eyes, its glorious colors. Minerva's workmanship was more wonderful than Arachne could ever hope to learn. As they finished she knew that she was outdone.

Minerva looked at Arachne's tapestry, woven of pride and a desire for vain conquest. It could not be allowed to stand beside hers that showed the gift of life to man in the olives and such beauty as that of the butterfly. The goddess struck Arachne's tapestry with her shuttle and tore it in pieces.

Arachne was suddenly filled with an understanding of how she had wasted her skill, and she longed to get away from all sight and sound of her weaving. A vine trailed down to the ground from a near by tree. Arachne twisted it about her body and tried to pull herself up by it to the tree, but Minerva would not allow this. She touched Arachne's form with the juices of aconite and at once her hair came off, and her nose and her ears as well. Her body shrank and shrivelled and her head grew smaller. Her fingers fastened themselves to her side and served for legs. She hung from the vine which changed to a long gray thread.

Arachne, the skilful weaver of Greece, was changed to Arachne, the spider of the forest. Through all the centuries since then she has been spinning her fragile threads and weaving her frail webs that a breath of wind, even, can destroy.

The prince who was the hero of one of your favorite once-upon-a-time stories was quite sure to have had a fairy godmother to watch over his ways and help in bringing his adventures to success. But Hercules, the Great, of old Greece than whom we have never known a greater hero, had two fairy godmothers. They were not known by exactly that name in the days when the myths were made, but there were two very powerful goddesses who presided over Hercules' destiny, and the odd thing about it was that no one knew which of these was the more important.

Hercules began life just like any other baby except that his father was the mighty Jupiter, a fact which made everyone expect a great deal of him. And just as used to happen in your old fairy tales, he had enemies because of his noble birth. One of these was the goddess, Juno.

Hercules lay in his cradle one day before he was able to walk even, and he suddenly saw something that would have frightened anyone much older than he. On each side of his cradle there appeared the green, hissing head of a huge serpent, their poisonous fangs thrust out to sting this child of the gods to death. Hercules' attendants ran away in terror not daring to give fight to the vipers, but he reached out his tiny hands, gripped a serpent in each by its throat and strangled them.

People began to look at Hercules in wonder after that. They watched him grow up, just like any other boy except that his limbs were stronger and his muscles harder than those of the average boy of Greece. There were still those who admired him and those who hated him, knowing that he was, really, the son of a god. So his enemies put Hercules in charge of a kind of tutor named Eurystheus who was under orders to give him the most impossible tasks to try and perform.

"The lad will fail and then we shall be well rid of him," the goddess Juno, who particularly disliked Hercules, said.

Hercules began life in a part of Greece that was known as the valley of Nemea. It was a place of olive orchards and fruit trees and fields of grain, but the terror of the place was the Nemean lion who lived close by in the fastness of the hills. There had never been known so huge a lion, with such wide, blood thirsty jaws. Eurystheus ordered Hercules to bring him the tawny hide of this monster.

"How shall I slay the Nemean lion?" Hercules asked.

"With your arrows and your club," Eurystheus replied carelessly, but he knew that no arrows in all Greece could pierce the lion's skin and that Hercules' club, made of a stout young tree, would also be powerless against the beast.

"Hercules will never return," the people of the valley said to each other as they watched the young hero start out boldly toward the hills.

But he returned the next day, as fresh and untroubled as when he had started, with the hide of the Nemean lion slung over his shoulder.

"Are yours magic arrows, and is your club charmed as well?" the youths who were Hercules' friends asked, crowding around him.

"I killed the lion with my hands alone, grasping him about his throat," Hercules explained to them.

Eurystheus, listening on the edge of the crowd, frowned at these words. "I must plan a greater labor for him," he thought.

There was a rich and beautiful city of Greece named Argos, but a fearful monster called the Hydra infested a swamp just outside it and one never knew when it would descend upon the well that supplied the people with pure water. It had nine heads and one of these was immortal, so the rumor went.

"Go to Argos and kill the Hydra," Eurystheus commanded Hercules.

Hercules was ready to dare this adventure. He started out again with no other arms than he had carried before and when he came to the well of Argos which kept the country from drought, he found the Hydra stationed there. Going up to it, Hercules struck off one of its heads with his club. What was his surprise to see two heads grow in the place of this one! It was going to be a task to destroy this creature, Hercules understood, as he laid on with his club against the menacing and increasing heads, hitting right and left and with no time between his telling blows. He struck off all of the Hydra's heads at last except the undying one. Finally Hercules thought of a plan for destroying this. He wrenched it off with his mighty hands and buried it deeply underneath a rock.

"Hercules shall be put to a task he will not like so well as encountering wild beasts," Eurystheus decided then. "He shall clean the Augean stables. We will see if a son of the gods has the will to accomplish that labor."

This was indeed a labor with very little of the spirit of adventure in it. Old King Augeus, of Elis in Greece had a herd of three thousand cattle and their stalls in his many stables had not been cleaned for thirty years. The cattle, all of them of blooded stock, were dying off because they were not properly cared for, and there was no hero of the king's train but felt the work of cleaning the stables to be too menial for him.

Hercules had no such thought as this, however. He was ready to attempt the labor; his only idea was how to accomplish it, and