Sword Of Alexander
The sword symbolizes the legend of the Gordian Knot linked to Alexander the Great. T
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- Sword Of Alexander
An exact replica of Alexander's the Great falcata. Alexander III of Macedon lived in 4th century BC, continuinued the polititic of his ancestors, create one of the biggest Empire in the History of the World and shows the superiority of Macedonian monarchy over Greek democracy. I finished Sword of Honour, book #23 in The Bolitho series by Alexander Kent. I read the first Bolitho novel when I was in high school after completing the Horatio Hornblower series by CS Forester. Since then I have read both series a number of times, with the exception of the last twelve books in the Bolitho series, which I am reading for the. The Sword of Alexander was inspired by the persona of Alexander the Great, and the famous military leader gave the game a somewhat cold and rigorous atmosphere - yet quite stylish. The background is a uniform pitch black tone, with the reels occupying most of the space available.
When Greek Defense Minister Dimitris Avramopoulos met with presidential candidate Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on April 28, he presented him with the Sword of Alexander in appreciation of Sisi’s status and efforts. Some, however, have questioned the sword’s significance and why it was given to him.
The sword symbolizes the legend of the Gordian Knot linked to Alexander the Great. The term is used to describe a problem that requires a brave act or a difficult decision to resolve. The story goes that once upon a time, the people of Phrygia did not have a legitimate king, so an oracle from Telmissus, Phrygia’s ancient capital, predicted that the next man to enter the city driving an oxcart would become the monarch.
The sword symbolizes the legend of the Gordian Knot linked to Alexander the Great.
A poor peasant named Gordias was the first to enter on an oxcart, so the priests declared him king. To show gratitude, Gordias’s son Midas presented the cart to Sabazios, whom the Greeks identified with Zeus, and the cart was tied with a knot, where no end to unbind it could be seen.
The cart was still at the palace of Phrygia’s old kings when Alexander the Great entered Gordium in the 4th century BC. Back then, Phrygia was a province of the Persian empire. In 333 BC, while Alexander spent the winter in Gordium, he attempted to untie the knot.
Think outside the box
When he could not find the end to unbind it, he struck it with his sword. Alexander’s biographers wrote that the oracle had also claimed that whoever untied the knot would be the conqueror of Asia. Alexander conquered Asia, and reached the Amu Darya and Indus rivers.
Courage is thus the significance of the sword given to Sisi, who stood by the Egyptian people on June 30 last year. He struck a knot and took a brave stance. This is what Egypt needs, and what Sisi needs to do.
The country needs to think outside the box, and search for unorthodox solutions to overcome political, economic and social problems that have accumulated and worsened in the last three years. Egypt needs someone who can wield Alexander’s sword, so the country can restore the status it deserves.
This article was first published in Egypt's al-Masry al-Youm on April 30, 2014.
___________________
Abdel Latif el-Menawy is an author, columnist and multimedia journalist who has covered conflicts around the world. He is the author of “Tahrir: the last 18 days of Mubarak,” a book he wrote as an eyewitness to events during the 18 days before the stepping down of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Menawy’s most recent public position was head of Egypt’s News Center. He is a member of the National Union of Journalists in the United Kingdom, and the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate. He can be found on Twitter @ALMenawy
The Gordian Knot is a legend of PhrygianGordium associated with Alexander the Great. It is often used as a metaphor for an intractable problem (untying an impossibly tangled knot) solved easily by finding an approach to the problem that renders the perceived constraints of the problem moot ('cutting the Gordian knot'):
Turn him to any cause of policy,
The Gordian Knot of it he will unloose,
Familiar as his garter
Legend[edit]
The Phrygians were without a king, but an oracle at Telmissus (the ancient capital of Lycia) decreed that the next man to enter the city driving an ox-cart should become their king. A peasant farmer named Gordias drove into town on an ox-cart and was immediately declared king.[a] Out of gratitude, his son Midas dedicated the ox-cart[1] to the Phrygian god Sabazios (whom the Greeks identified with Zeus) and tied it to a post with an intricate knot of 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 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 wanted to untie the knot but struggled to do so without success. 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 loosed the knot by pulling the linchpin from the yoke.[2]
Sword Of Alexander The Great
Sources from antiquity agree that Alexander was confronted with the challenge of the knot, but his solution is disputed. Both Plutarch and Arrian relate that, according to Aristobulus,[b] Alexander pulled the knot out of its pole pin, exposing the two ends of the cord and allowing him to untie the knot without having to cut through it.[3][4] Some classical scholars regard this as more plausible than the popular account.[5] Literary sources of the story include Alexander's propagandist Arrian (Anabasis Alexandri2.3), Quintus Curtius (3.1.14), Justin's epitome of Pompeius Trogus (11.7.3), and Aelian's De Natura Animalium 13.1.[6]
Alexander later went on to conquer Asia as far as the Indus and the Oxus, thus fulfilling the prophecy.
Interpretations[edit]
The Sword Of Alexander The Great
The knot may have been a religious knot-cipher guarded by Gordian/Midas' 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 fable, genuine mythology has few completely arbitrary elements. This myth taken as a whole seems designed to confer legitimacy to 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 Gordias/Midas 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 'Gordias'[9] or the locally attested, authentically Phrygian 'Midas'[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 (whether eponymous 'Gordias' to Greeks, or 'Midas' to Anatolians) 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[edit]
Actual Sword Of Alexander The Great
Notes[edit]
- ^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.
- ^Arrian and Plutarch are secondary sources; Aristobolus' text is lost.
References[edit]
- ^Arrian, 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'.
- ^ abcdAndrews, Evan (3 February 2016). 'What was the Gordian Knot?'. History. Archived from the original on 21 January 2019. Retrieved 30 May 2017.
- ^Arrian (1971) [1958]. The Campaigns of Alexander. Translated by de Sélincourt, Aubrey (Revised, Enlarged ed.). Penguin Group. p. 105.
- ^Plutarch (2004). Clough, Arthur Hugh (ed.). The Life of Alexander the Great. Translated by Dryden, John. Modern Library. pp. 19. ISBN978-0812971330.
- ^Fredricksmeyer, Ernest A. (July 1961). 'Alexander, Midas, and the Oracle at Gordium'. Classical Philology. 56 (3): 160–168. doi:10.1086/364593. JSTOR265752. citing Tarn, W.W. 1948
- ^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 149–51.
- ^ abGraves, Robert (1960) [1955]. 'Midas'. The Greek Myths(PDF) (Revised ed.). Penguin Books. pp. 168–169. Archived(PDF) from the original on 27 January 2018.
- ^'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).
- ^Trogus apud Justin, Plutarch, Alexander 18.1; Curtius 3.1.11 and 14.
- ^Arrian
- ^Roller, Lynn E. (October 1984). 'Midas and the Gordian knot'. Classical Antiquity. 3 (2): 256–271. doi:10.2307/25010818. 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[edit]
- Media related to Gordian Knot at Wikimedia Commons
- The dictionary definition of Gordian knot at Wiktionary