Stumbled on this story from the Greek mythology, while reading Salman Rushdie's essay collection 'Step Across This Line: Collected Non-Fiction 1992-2002':
"The Greeks tell many stories of quarrels between us and the gods. Arachne, the great artist of the loom, sets her skills of weaving and embroidery against those of the goddess of wisdom herself, Minerva or Pallas Athena; and impudently chooses to weave versions of only those scenes that reveal the mistakes of the gods - the rape of Europa, Leda and the Swan. For this - for the irreverence, not for her lesser skill - for what we would now call art and chutzpah - the goddess changes her mortal rival into a spider."
Thus man began to share his space with the spider, which along the way turned into arachnophobia, much later hollywoodised on the celluloid screen in 'Arachnophobia'.