He also managed to arouse an interest in what he had done.” The aged Aristobulus (one of Alexander's early historians)…later claimed that Alexander had pulled a pin out of the chariot-link and drawn the yoke out sideways through the knot, but the sword-cut has the weight of authority behind it and is preferable to an eighty-year-old historian's apology either way, Alexander outmaneuvered, rather than unravelled, his problem. Drawing his sword, he slashed the knot in half, producing the necessary end and correctly claiming that the knot was loosed, if not untied.

When no end could be found, Alexander began to lose patience, for failure would not go down well with his men. But one way or another, he untied or 'cut the Gordian knot.'įox relates the tale this way: ”On the day before leaving Gordium he went up to the acropolis meaning to try the chariot which he had saved for his farewell friends gathered round to watch him, but hard though he pulled, the knot round the yoke remained stubbornly tight. Heracles to Alexander the Great: Treasures from the Royal Capital of Macedon, a Hellenic Kingdom in the Age of Democracy is at the Ashmolean, Oxford, until August 2011.Some say that Alexander cleverly untied the knot, others that he simply unsheathed his sword and cut it. 'We need Alexander to help us we need our pride restored again.' 'Our strength is our past, and our memory,' Kottaridi said. The building, as proved by the dazzling silver, was the scene of royal banquets on a scale which might have made Cecil B DeMille splutter: the 16 banqueting halls had space on double couches for more than 400 diners, while the court had room for 3,500 seated guests.įuture excavation, and the plans for a major museum to display the extraodinary finds, may depend on what the future holds for the tottering Greek economy. Only a fraction of the cemetery (comprising more than 500 burial mounds) and Philip's huge palace have been excavated – enough, Lane Fox said, to suggest it made Buck House 'look like a cottage'. The site has only begun in the last 30 years to reveal its secrets, which include the unlooted tombs of Philip II, of a queen who may have been his grandmother buried covered from head to foot in gold, and of Alexander IV, the last of the line of kings. Most of the pieces have been brought by Angeliki Kottaridi, curator and archaeologist, straight from her stores in Vergina – a small town situated on top of Aegae, the ancient capital of Macedon. Some were excavated only in the past few years. Only a handful of the jewellery, weapons, armour, sculptures and fragments of architecture has ever been seen by the public anywhere, even in Greece. Another diadem of golden oak leaves on display had only been rediscovered in 2008 after it was deliberately hidden with the cremated remains of a teenage boy who may have been Alexander's murdered son.

Robin lane fox alexander