“Ah, vain Arachne, thee I saw distraught, already turned half spider, in the shreds of that which thou to thine own ill had’st wrought!”
. . . . .
Dante notices carvings along the path, depicting various biblical and classical figures correspond to the carvings Dante saw when he first entered the Pride level of Purgatory. While those carvings showed examples of humility, these ones give examples of prideful behavior and its consequences. Each level of Purgatory contains a meditation of this type, showing a virtue and its sinful opposite. His first P is erased and walking more lightly Arachne, who appears in Purgatorio 12 as an example of foolish pride, comes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Arachne is engaged in a weaving contest with Minerva, the goddess of handicraft. Arachne’s weaving is without fault. Unable to handle her defeat, Minerva transforms her rival into a spider.