Textiles in mythology and folklore the labyrinth and safely out again. Among the Olympians, the weaver goddess is Athena, who, despite her role, was bested by her acolyte Arachne, who was turned later into a weaving spider. The daughters of Minyas, Alcithoe, Leuconoe and their sister, defied Dionysus and honored Athena in their weaving instead of joining his festival. A woven peplum, laid upon the knees of the goddess's iconic image, was central to festivals honoring both Athena at Athens, and Hera. In Homer's legend of the Odyssey, Penelope the faithful wife of Odysseus was a weaver, weaving her design for a shroud by day,
Athena Promachos where a large, bronze, statue of Athena was destroyed by a “drunken crowd” of Crusaders which is now thought to have been the "Athena Promachos." Of surviving models thought to represent the type, the two outstanding ones are the "Athena Elgin", a small bronze statuette in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, who bears an owl in her outstretched hand (as among some coin types), and the "Athena Medici" torso in the Musée du Louvre, of which there are a number of replicas. The engravings on the shield which Athena is holding were originally drafted by the great Greek painter, Parrhasius