The Gordian Knot
Alexander fulfilled the letter of a prophecy and he did become ruler of the world, but it wasn’t quite fair.
333 BC
© Klaus-Peter Simon, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC-BY-SA 3.0.
The ruins of the acropolis of Gordium in Phrygia, near modern Yassıhüyük, Turkey, some 60 miles southwest of Ankara. Here Alexander stood for a moment, contemplating the famous knot, before drawing his sword.
Introduction
To ‘cut the Gordian knot’ is to solve an apparently intractable problem simply, by lateral thinking. I’m not sure, however, that Alexander really ‘solved’ the problem at all.
A PEASANT farmer from Phrygia named Gordias was ploughing a field when an eagle came and perched on the yoke of his oxen, a sign, he was told, that he was destined to become a father of kings.
Oddly enough, the nobility of the capital, Telmissus, had just been instructed by an oracle to hand the crown to the next person to arrive in the city on an ox-cart.
So when Gordias rattled into Telmissus on market day, he became King of Phrygia.
His son Midas dedicated their cart to the god Sabazios, and displayed it in the new capital, Gordium, tethered to a pole by a baffling knot.
The knot’s ends were tucked inside so they could not be pulled, and it was said that anyone who could unloose the cart would be king of all the world.
In 333 BC Alexander the Great wintered at Gordium, and like any other tourist, was shown the impossible knot.*
He simply sliced through it with his sword.
Alexander’s visit appears to be a matter of historical record. Gordias and Midas, if not merely legends, lived sometime in the second millennium BC. Midas gave his name to The Midas Touch.
