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.
Snake
The ancient Greeks used the Gorgoneion, a depiction of a hideous face with serpents for hair, as an apotropaic symbol to ward off evil. In a Greek myth described by Pseudo-Apollodorus in his "Bibliotheca", Medusa was a Gorgon with serpents for hair whose gaze turned all those who looked at her to stone and was slain by the hero Perseus. In the Roman poet Ovid's "Metamorphoses", Medusa is said to have once been a beautiful priestess of Athena, whom Athena turned into a serpent-haired monster after she was raped by the god Poseidon in Athena's temple. In another myth referenced by the Boeotian poet Hesiod and described in detail by Pseudo-Apollodorus, the hero Heracles is said to have slain the Lernaean Hydra, a multiple-headed serpent which dwelt in the swamps of Lerna.