Question 792

The X is a legend associated with Y. It is often used as a metaphor for an intractable problem, solved by a bold stroke ("cutting the X").

At one time the Phyrgians were without a king. An oracle at Telmissus (the ancient capital of Phyrgia) decreed that the next man to enter the city driving an ox-cart should become their king. This man was a poor peasant, Z, 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 had landed on that ox-cart. In gratitude, his son Midas dedicated the ox-cart to the Phrygian god Sabazios (whom the Greeks identified with Zeus) and either tied it to a post or tied its shaft with an intricate ____ of cornel bark. The ox-cart still stood in the palace of the former kings of Phyrgia in the fourth century BC when Y arrived, at which point Phrygia had been reduced to a province of the Persian empire.

In 333 BC, while wintering here, Y attempted to "solve" X. When he could not find the end to X to "solve" it, he sliced it in half with a stroke of his sword, producing the required ends (the so-called "Y-ian solution"). That night there was a violent thunderstorm. The prophets took this as a sign that Zeus was pleased and would grant Y many victories. Once Y had sliced X with a sword-stroke, his biographers claimed in retrospect that an oracle further prophesied that the one to "solve" X would become the king of Asia.

Identify X, Y and Z.

Answer: X: The Gordian Knot, Y: Alexander the Great, Z: Gordias.