Gordian Knot

"Turn him to any cause of policy,
The Gordian Knot of it he will unloose,
Familiar as his garter" (Shakespeare, Henry V

Henry V (play)

Henry V is a history play by William Shakespeare, believed to be written in 1599. It is based on the life of King Henry V of England, and focuses on events immediately before and after the Battle of Agincourt during the Hundred Years' War....
, Act 1 Scene 1.

Discussion

Ask a question about 'Gordian Knot' Start a new discussion about 'Gordian Knot' Answer questions from other users Full Discussion Forum

Encyclopedia

The Gordian Knot is a legend

Legend

A legend is a narrative of human actions that are perceived both by teller and listeners to take place within human history and to possess certain qualities that give the tale verisimilitude ....
 associated with Alexander the Great

Alexander the Great

Alexander the Great , also known as Alexander III of Macedon was an ancient Greeks King of Macedon . He was one of the most successful military commanders of all time and is presumed undefeated in battle....
. It is often used as a metaphor

Metaphor

Metaphor is language that directly compares seemingly unrelated subjects. It is a figure of speech that compares two or more things without using the words "like" or "as." More generally, a metaphor describes a first subject as being or equal to a second object in some way....
 for an intractable problem, solved by a bold stroke ("cutting the Gordian knot"):

"Turn him to any cause of policy,
The Gordian Knot of it he will unloose,
Familiar as his garter" (Shakespeare, Henry V

Henry V (play)

Henry V is a history play by William Shakespeare, believed to be written in 1599. It is based on the life of King Henry V of England, and focuses on events immediately before and after the Battle of Agincourt during the Hundred Years' War....
, Act 1 Scene 1. 45-47)

Legend

At one time the Phrygians were without a legitimate king. An oracle

Oracle

An oracle is a person or agency considered to be a source of wise counsel or prophecy opinion; an infallible authority, usually Spirituality in nature....
 at Telmissus (the ancient capital of Phrygia

Phrygia

In antiquity, Phrygia was a kingdom in the west central part of Anatolia, in what is now modern-day Turkey. The Phrygians initially lived in the Southern Balkans; according to Herodotus, under the name of Bryges, changing it to Phruges after their final migration to Anatolia, via the Hellespont....
) decreed that the next man to enter the city driving an ox

Ox

Oxen are bovinae trained as draught animals. Often they are adult, castration males. Oxen are used for ploughing, transport, hauling cargo, threshing grain by trampling, powering machines for grinding grain, irrigation or other purposes, and drawing carts and wagons....
-cart

Cart

A cart is a vehicle or device designed for transport, using two or four wheels and normally pulled by one or a pair of draught animals. A handcart is pulled or pushed by one or more people....
 should become their king. This man was a poor peasant, Gordias

Gordias

Gordias was a royal name in the mythic prehistory of Phrygia. In the Greek mythology age, kings of Phrygia were alternately named Gordias and Midas....
, who drove into town on his ox-cart. He was declared king by the priests. This had been predicted in a second way by a sign of the gods, when an eagle

Eagle

Eagles are large bird of prey which are members of the bird family Accipitridae, and belong to several Genus which are not necessarily closely related to each other....
 had landed on that ox-cart. In gratitude, his son Midas

Midas

In Greek mythology, Midas or King Midas is popularly remembered for his ability to turn everything he touched into gold: the Midas touch....
 dedicated the ox-cart to the Phrygian god Sabazios

Sabazios

Sabazios is the nomadic horseman and sky father god of the Phrygians and Thracians. In Indo-European languages, such as Phrygian language, the '-zios' element in his name derives from dyeus, the common precursor of 'deus' and Zeus....
 (whom the Greeks

Greeks

The Greeks , also known as Hellenes, are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighbouring regions, who can also be found in Greek diaspora communities around the world....
 identified with Zeus

Zeus

Zeus in Greek mythology is the king of the gods, the ruler of Mount Olympus and the god of the sky father and List of thunder gods. His symbols are the thunderbolt, eagle, bull , and oak....
) and either tied it to a post or tied its shaft with an intricate knot

Knot

A knot is a method for fastening or securing linear material such as rope by tying or interweaving. It may consist of a length of one or more segments of rope, string, webbing, twine, strap, or even chain interwoven such that the line can bind to itself or to some other object?the "load"....
 of cornel

European Cornel

The European Cornel is a species of dogwood native to southern Europe and southwest Asia. In North America, the plant is known by the common name of "Cornelian Cherry."...
 (Cornus mas) bark. The ox-cart still stood in the palace

Palace

A palace is a grand residence, especially a royal residence or the home of a head of state or some other high-ranking dignitary, such as a bishop or archbishop....
 of the former kings of Phrygia

Phrygia

In antiquity, Phrygia was a kingdom in the west central part of Anatolia, in what is now modern-day Turkey. The Phrygians initially lived in the Southern Balkans; according to Herodotus, under the name of Bryges, changing it to Phruges after their final migration to Anatolia, via the Hellespont....
 at Gordium

Gordium

Gordium was the Capital_ of ancient Phrygia. It was located at the site of modern Yassih?y?k, about 70-80 km southwest of Ankara , in the immediate vicinity of Polatli district....
 in the fourth century BC when Alexander arrived, at which point Phrygia had been reduced to a satrap

Satrap

Satrap was the name given to the governors of the provinces of ancient Medes and Persian Empire empires, including the Achaemenid Empire and in several of their heirs, such as the Sassanid Empire and the Hellenistic civilization empires....
y, or province, of the Persian Empire

Persian Empire

The 'Persian Empire' was a series of successive Iranian or Persianization empires that ruled over the Iranian plateau, the original Persian homeland, and beyond in Southwest Asia, South Asia, Central Asia and the Caucasus....
.

In 333 BC, while wintering at Gordium, Alexander attempted to untie the knot. When he could find no end to the knot, to unbind it, he sliced it in half with a stroke of his sword, producing the required ends (the so-called "Alexandrian solution"). Once Alexander had sliced the knot with a sword-stroke, his biographers claimed in retrospect that an oracle further prophesied that the one to untie the knot would become the king of Asia.

Plutarch

Plutarch

Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. AD 46 ? 120 ? commonly known in English as Plutarch ? was a Ancient Rome historian , biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonism....
 disputes the claim that Alexander sliced the knot with his sword, and relates that according to Aristobulus

Aristobulus of Cassandreia

Aristobulus of Cassandreia , Greeks historian, son of Aristobulus, probably a Phocian settled inCassandreia, accompanied Alexander the Great on his campaigns....
, Alexander pulled the knot out of its pole pin rather than cutting it. Either way, Alexander did go on to conquer Asia as far as the Indus and the Oxus, fulfilling the prophecy.

Sources

Alexander was a figure of the most outstanding celebrity, and the episode of the Gordian Knot was known to every literate person—and doubtless to many as well who were not—from the third century BC to the end of Antiquity and beyond. The literary sources are Alexander's propagandist Arrian

Arrian

File:Flavius_Arrianus.jpgLucius Flavius Arrianus 'Xenophon , known in English as Arrian , and Arrian of Nicomedia, was a Ancient Rome historian , a public servant, a military commander and a philosopher of the Roman and Byzantine Greece period....
 (Anabasis Alexandri

Anabasis Alexandri

Anabasis Alexandri, the Campaigns of Alexander by Arrian is the most important source on Alexander the Great.The Greek term wiktionary:anabasis referred to an expedition from a coastline into the interior of a country....
 2.3) Quintus Curtius (3.1.14), Justin's epitome of Pompeius Trogus (11.7.3), and Aelian

Claudius Aelianus

Claudius Aelianus , often seen as just Aelian, born at Praeneste, was a Roman author and teacher of rhetoric who flourished under Septimius Severus and probably outlived Elagabalus, who died in 222....
's De Natura Animalium 13.1.

Interpretations

The knot may in fact have been a religious knot-cipher guarded by Gordian's priests and priestesses. Robert Graves

Robert Graves

Robert Ranke Graves was an England poet, translator and novelist. During his long life, he produced more than 140 works. He was the son of the Anglo-Irish writer Alfred Perceval Graves and Amalie von Ranke, a niece of the famous German historian Leopold von Ranke....
 suggested that it may have symbolized the ineffable name of Dionysus

Dionysus

In classical mythology, Dionysus or Dionysos , is the God of wine, the inspirer of ritual madness and ecstasy, and a major figure of Greek mythology, and one of the twelve Olympians, among whom Greek mythology treated Dionysus as a late arrival....
 that, enknotted like a cipher, would have been passed on through generations of priests and revealed only to the kings of Phrygia.

Unlike fable

Fable

A fable is a succinct story, in prose or verse, that features animals, plants, inanimate, or nature which are anthropomorphized , and that illustrates a moral lesson , which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim ....
, true myth

Mythology

The word mythology refers to a body of folklore/myths/legends that a particular culture believes to be true and that often use the supernatural to interpret natural events and to explain the nature of the universe and humanity....
 has few completely arbitrary elements. This myth taken as a whole seems designed to confer legitimacy to a dynastic change in this central Anatolia

Anatolia

Anatolia or Asia Minor is a region of Western Asia, comprising most of the modern Republic of Turkey. It is a geographic region bounded by the Black Sea to the north, the Caucasus to the northeast, the Aegean Sea to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and the Iranian plateau to the east and southeast....
n kingdom: thus Alexander's "brutal cutting of the knot... ended an ancient dispensation." The ox-cart seems to suggest a longer voyage, rather than a local journey, perhaps linking Gordias/Midas with an attested origin-myth in Macedon, of which Alexander is most likely to have been aware. To judge from the myth, apparently the new dynasty was not immemorially ancient, but had widely remembered origins in a local, but non-priestly "outsider" class, represented by the peasant Gordias in his ox-cart. Other Greek myths

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the Ancient Greece concerning their List of Greek mythological figures#Immortals and Greek hero cult, Cosmology#Metaphysical cosmology, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices....
 legitimize dynasties by right of conquest (compare Cadmus

Cadmus

Cadmus or Kadmos , in Greek mythology mythology, was a Phoenician prince, the son of Agenor and the brother of Phoenix , Cilix and Europa ....
), but the legitimizing oracle stressed in this myth suggests that the previous dynasty had been a race of priest-kings allied to the oracle deity.

Cultural References

The historian Gregory Freeze described the Tsarist Russian social policy of serfdom

Serfdom

Serfdom is the socio-economic status of unfree peasants under feudalism, and specifically relates to Manorialism. It was a condition of Debt bondage or modified slavery which developed primarily during the High Middle Ages in Europe....
 as a Gordian Knot, explaining that "public voices were already warning that either Kornilov or Lenin

Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin , born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov and also known by the pseudonyms V.I. Lenin and N. Lenin, was a Russians revolutionary, a Bolshevik Communism politician, the principal leader of the October Revolution and the first head of the USSR....
 would sunder this Gordian knot."

Alan Moore

Alan Moore

Alan Moore is an English writer most famous for his influential work in comics, including the acclaimed graphic novels Watchmen, V for Vendetta and From Hell....
's graphic novel Watchmen

Watchmen

Watchmen is a twelve-issue comic book limited series created by writer Alan Moore, artist Dave Gibbons, and colorist John Higgins . The series was published by DC Comics during 1986 and 1987, and has been subsequently reprinted in collected form....
 features a character known as the "Gordian Knot man" who works for the Gordian Knot Lock Company.

See also

• Cut-the-knot
  Cut-the-knot
  
  Cut-the-knot is an educational website maintained by Alexander Bogomolny and devoted to popular exposition of a great variety of topics in mathematics....
  
• Egg of Columbus
  Egg of Columbus
  
  The egg of Columbus or Columbus's egg usually means a genius idea or discovery that seems simple or easy after the fact.The expression refers to a popular story of how Christopher Columbus, having been told that discovering the Americas was no great accomplishment, challenged his critics to make an egg stand on its tip; and, after t...
  
• Archimedean point
  Archimedean point
  
  An Archimedean point is a hypothetical vantage point from which an observer can objectively perceive the subject of inquiry, with a view of totality....
  
• Endless knot
  Endless knot
  
  The endless knot or eternal knot is a symbolic knot found in Tibet and Mongolia. The motif is used in Tibetan Buddhism, and may also be found in Chinese art as one of the Ashtamangala....
  
• Hellenic Army IV Army Corps
  Hellenic Army IV Army Corps
  
  The IV Army Corps is an army corps of the modern Hellenic Army....
  : ?? ??fe? t?? desµ? ?e??s?a? (Solve the knot with the sword.)