Spider told by the Roman poet Ovid in his "Metamorphoses", Arachne was a Lydian girl who challenged the goddess Athena to a weaving contest. Arachne won, but Athena destroyed her tapestry out of jealousy, causing Arachne to hang herself. In an act of mercy, Athena brought Arachne back to life as the first spider. Stories about the trickster-spider Anansi are prominent in the folk traditions of the Asante people of Ghana. In some cultures, spiders have symbolized patience due to their hunting technique of setting webs and waiting for prey, as well as mischief and malice due to their venomous bites.
Athena the Greek philosopher Plato (428–347 BC) gives some rather imaginative etymologies of Athena's name, based on the theories of the ancient Athenians and his own etymological speculations: Thus, Plato believed that Athena's name was derived from Greek , "Atheonóa"—which the later Greeks rationalised as from the deity's (θεός, "theós") mind (νοῦς, "noũs"). The second-century AD orator Aelius Aristides attempted to derive natural symbols from the etymological roots of Athena's names to be "aether", "air", "earth", and "moon". Athena was originally the Aegean goddess of the palace, who presided over household crafts and protected the king. A single Mycenaean Greek inscription