Mythos: A Retelling of the Myths of Ancient Greece

Phrygia and the Gordian Knot

The Greeks loved to mythologize the founders of towns and cities. Athena’s gift of the olive to the people of Athens and her raising of Erechtheus (the issue of Hephaestus and the semen-soaked fillet, you will recall) to be the founder of the city seems to have helped foster the Athenian sense of self. The story of Cadmus and the dragon’s teeth did the same for Thebans. Sometimes, as is the case with the founding of the city of Gordium, elements of the story can move from myth to legend to actual, identifiable history.

In Macedonia there lived a poor but ambitious peasant called GORDIAS. One day, as he laboured in his barren stony fields, an eagle landed on the pole of his oxcart and fixed him with a fierce glare.

‘I knew it!’ Gordias said to himself, ‘I have always felt that I was marked for greatness. This eagle proves it. I have a destiny.’

He raised his plough and drove the ox and cart many hundreds of miles towards the oracle of Zeus Sabazios.fn1 As Gordias lumbered along, the eagle gripped the pole fast with its talons, never flinching no matter how violently the cart bumped and swayed over the potholes and boulders.

On the way, Gordias encountered a young Telmissian girl endowed in equal measure with great prophetic powers and an alluring beauty that stirred his heart. She seemed to have been expecting him and urged that they make haste at once to Telmissus, where he should sacrifice his ox to Zeus Sabazios. Gordias, fired by the coming together of all his hopes, undertook to follow her advice so long as she agreed to marry him. She bowed her head in assent and they set off for the city.

It so happened that, at this very moment, the King of Phrygia had just died in his bed. Since he left no heir or obvious successor, the people of his capital hurried to the shrine of Zeus Sabazios to find out what should be done. The oracle told them to anoint and crown the first man to enter the city in a cart. So it was that the townspeople were clustering excitedly round the gates at the very moment that Gordias and the prophetess arrived. The eagle flew from his perch with a great cry as they crossed the threshold. The populace threw their caps in the air and cheered until they were hoarse.

In a very short time Gordias had gone from scratching a lonely living in the Macedonian dirt to being wed to a beautiful Telmissian seer and crowned King of Phrygia. He drew up plans to rebuild the city (which he immodestly named Gordium in his own honour) and settled down to reign over Phrygia and live happily ever after. Which he did. Sometimes, even in the world of Greek mythology, things go well.

The oxcart became a holy relic, a symbol of Gordias’s divine right to rule. A carved post of polished dogwood was placed in the agora and the yoke of the cart secured to it with a rope tied up in the most intricate knot the world had seen. Gordias was determined that the cart should never be stolen from the town square. The legend arose, in that mysterious and unattributable way that legends do arise, that whoever untied this fiendish knot would one day rule Asia. Many tried – master mariners, mathematicians, toymakers, artists, artisans, tricksters, philosophers and ambitious children, but none could even begin to unpick its elaborate interwoven hitches, loops and twists.

The great Gordian knot lay unsolved for more than a thousand years until a reckless and brilliant young Macedonian conqueror and king called Alexander rode with his army into town. When told of the legend he took one look at the great tangle of rope, raised his sword and swept it down, cutting the Gordian knot and earning the delighted praise of his own and future generations.fn2

Meanwhile, back in time, Gordias’s son Prince MIDAS grew up to be a friendly, merry young man, loved and admired by all who knew him.