Arachne
It has also been suggested that Jeremias Gotthelf's nineteenth century novella, "The Black Spider", was heavily influenced by the Arachne story from Ovid's "Metamorphoses". In the novella, a woman is turned into a venomous spider having reneged on a deal with the devil.
Cultural depictions of spiders
The spider, along with its web, is featured in mythological fables, cosmology, artistic spiritual depictions, and in oral traditions throughout the world since ancient times. In Ancient Egypt, the spider was associated with the goddess Neith in her aspect as spinner and weaver of destiny, this link continuing later through the Babylonian Ishtar and the Greek Arachne, who was later equated as the Roman goddess Minerva.