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 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