Arachne was a human weaver of great skill and great beauty. She was extremely confident of her skills and challenged Athena. During the weaving competition, Arachne insulted the Gods and Athena transformed the arrogant girl into a spider, a huge spider with a human face and bulbous spiders’ body that carried a spool of thread. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, he refers to the Goddess Minerva, not Athena but the story remains the same due to being Roman not Greek.