Following the thread

So as I mentioned previously Idmon of Kolophon, the father of Arachne, was a phoinekes or dyer of purple from Lydia.

In Arachne’s tapestry she includes a scene involving the seduction by Bacchus of Erigone, who is in many respects her prototype:

It was during the reign of Pandion that Demeter and Dionysos came to Attika. Keleus welcomed Demeter to Eleusis, and Ikarios received Dionysos, who gave him a vine-cutting and taught him the art of making wine. Ikarios was eager to share the god’s kindness with mankind, so he went to some shepherds, who, when they had tasted the drink and then delightedly and recklessly gulped it down undiluted, thought they had been poisoned and slew Ikarios. But in the daylight they regained their senses and buried him. As his daughter was looking for him, a dog named Maira, who had been Ikarios’ faithful companion, unearthed the corpse; and Erigone, in the act of mourning her father, hanged herself. (Apollodoros, Bibliotheca 2.192)

Maira was placed in the heavens and granted cultic honors by Dionysos:

On his right hand hung a napkin with a loose nap, and he had a bowl of wine and a casket of incense. The incense, and wine, and sheep’s guts, and the foul entrails of a filthy dog, he put upon the hearth–we saw him do it. Then to me he said, ‘Thou askest why an unwonted victim is assigned to these rites?’ Indeed, I had asked the question. ‘Learn the cause,’ the flamen said. ‘There is a Dog (they call it the Icarian dog), and when that constellation rises the earth is parched and dry, and the crop ripens too soon. So this dog is put on the altar instead of the starry dog.’ (Ovid, Fasti 4.901 ff)

Julius Pollux asserted (Onomasticon 1.45–49) that the purple dye was first discovered by Herakles, or rather, by his dog, whose mouth was stained purple from chewing on snails along the coast of the Levant.

And from Pliny the Elder (Natural History 9.62) comes this interesting detail:

The most favourable season for taking these fish is after the rising of the Dog-star, or else before spring; for when they have once discharged their waxy secretion, their juices have no consistency.

So you know how there’s that whole thread of connection between Spider, Hermes and Saint Paul?

Funny story. I’ll let Luke tell it:

On the sabbath we went outside the city gate along the river where we thought there would be a place of prayer. We sat and spoke with the women who had gathered there. One of them, a woman named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth, from the city of Thyatira, a worshiper of God, listened, and the Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what Paul was saying. After she and her household had been baptized, she offered us an invitation, ‘If you consider me a believer in the Lord, come and stay at my home,’ and she prevailed on us. (Acts 16:13-15)