Gordian Knot

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For other uses, see Gordian Knot (disambiguation).
Alexander the Great cuts the Gordian Knot by Jean-Simon Berthélemy (1743–1811)
Alexander the Great Cutting the Gordian Knot (1767) by Jean-François Godefroy
Alexander the Great Cutting the Gordian Knot by André Castaigne (1898–1899)

The cutting of the Gordian Knot is an

Gordium in Phrygia, regarding a complex knot that tied an oxcart. Reputedly, whoever could untie it would be destined to rule all of Asia. In 333 BC Alexander was challenged to untie the knot. Instead of untangling it laboriously as expected, he dramatically cut through it with his sword, thus exercising another form of mental genius. It is thus used as a metaphor
for a seemingly intractable problem which is solved by exercising brute force.

Turn him to any cause of policy,
The Gordian Knot of it he will unloose,
Familiar as his garter

— Shakespeare, Henry V, Act 1 Scene 1. 45–47

Legend

The

cornel bark (Cornus mas). The knot was later described by Roman historian Quintus Curtius Rufus as comprising "several knots all so tightly entangled that it was impossible to see how they were fastened".[2]

The ox-cart still stood in the palace of the former kings of Phrygia at

Gordium in the fourth century BC when Alexander the Great arrived, at which point Phrygia had been reduced to a satrapy, or province, of the Persian Empire. An oracle had declared that any man who could unravel its elaborate knots was destined to become ruler of all of Asia.[2] Alexander the Great wanted to untie the knot but struggled to do so. He then reasoned that it would make no difference how the knot was loosed, so he drew his sword and sliced it in half with a single stroke.[2] In an alternative version of the story, Alexander the Great loosed the knot by pulling the linchpin from the yoke.[2]

Sources from antiquity agree that Alexander the Great was confronted with the challenge of the knot, but his solution is disputed. Both

Pompeius Trogus (11.7.3), and Aelian's De Natura Animalium 13.1.[6]

Alexander the Great later went on to conquer Asia as far as the

Oxus
, thus fulfilling the prophecy.

Interpretations

The knot may have been a religious knot-cipher guarded by priests and priestesses. Robert Graves suggested that it may have symbolised the ineffable name of Dionysus that, knotted like a cipher, would have been passed on through generations of priests and revealed only to the kings of Phrygia.[7]

Unlike popular

dynastic change in this central Anatolian kingdom: thus Alexander's "brutal cutting of the knot ... ended an ancient dispensation."[7]

The ox-cart suggests a longer voyage, rather than a local journey, perhaps linking Alexander the Great with an attested origin-myth in Macedon, of which Alexander is most likely to have been aware.[8] Based on this origin myth, the new dynasty was not immemorially ancient, but had widely remembered origins in a local, but non-priestly "outsider" class, represented by Greek reports equally as an eponymous peasant[9] or the locally attested, authentically Phrygian[10] in his ox-cart. Roller (1984) separates out authentic Phrygian elements in the Greek reports and finds a folk-tale element and a religious one, linking the dynastic founder (with the cults of "Zeus" and Cybele).[11]

Other Greek myths legitimize dynasties by right of conquest (compare Cadmus), but in this myth the stressed legitimising oracle suggests that the previous dynasty was a race of priest-kings allied to the unidentified oracular deity.

See also

Explanatory notes

  1. ^ The ox-cart is often depicted in works of art as a chariot, which made it a more readily legible emblem of power and military readiness. His position had also been predicted earlier by an eagle landing on his cart, a sign to him from the gods.
  2. ^ Arrian and Plutarch are secondary sources; Aristobolus' text is lost.

References

  1. Anabasis Alexandri
    (Αλεξάνδρου Ανάβασις), Book ii.3): "καὶ τὴν ἅμαξαν τοῦ πατρὸς ἐν τῇ ἄκρᾳ ἀναθεῖναι χαριστήρια τῷ Διὶ τῷ βασιλεῖ ἐπὶ τοῦ ἀετοῦ τῇ πομπῇ." which means "and he offered his father's cart as a gift to king Zeus as gratitude for sending the eagle".
  2. ^
    History. Archived
    from the original on 21 January 2019. Retrieved 30 May 2017.
  3. The Campaigns of Alexander. Translated by de Sélincourt, Aubrey
    (Revised, Enlarged ed.). Penguin Group. p. 105.
  4. ISBN 978-0812971330
    .
  5. S2CID 162250370
    . citing Tarn, W.W. 1948
  6. ^ The four sources are given in Robin Lane Fox, Alexander the Great (1973) 1986: Notes to Chapter 10, p. 518; Fox recounts the anecdote, pp. 149–151.
  7. ^ a b Graves, Robert (1960) [1955]. "Midas". The Greek Myths (PDF) (Revised ed.). Penguin Books. pp. 168–169. Archived (PDF) from the original on 27 January 2018.
  8. ^ "Surely Alexander believed that this god, who established for Midas the rule over Phrygia, now guaranteed to him the fulfillment of the promise of rule over Asia", (Fredricksmeyer, 1961, p 165).
  9. ^ Trogus apud Justin, Plutarch, Alexander 18.1; Curtius 3.1.11 and 14.
  10. ^ Arrian
  11. JSTOR 25010818
    . Both Roller and Fredricksmeyer (1961) offer persuasive arguments that the original name associated with the wagon is "Midas", "Gordias" being a Greek back-formation from the site name Gordion, according to Roller.

External links
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