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<blockquote>
“There was also another traditional belief about the wagon: according to this, the man who undid the knot which fixed its yoke was destined to be the lord of Asia. The cord was made from the bark of the cornel tree, and so cunningly was the knot tied that no one could see where it began or where it ended. For Alexander, then, how to undo it was indeed a puzzle, though he was none the less unwilling to leave it as it was, as his failure might possibly lead to public disturbances. Accounts of what followed differ: some say that Alexander cut the knot with a stroke of his sword and exclaimed, ‘I have undone it!’, but Aristobulus thinks that he took out the pin – a sort of wooden peg which was driven right through the shaft of the wagon and held the knot together – and thus pulled the yoke away from the shaft. I do not myself presume to dogmatize on this subject. In any case, when he and his attendants left the place where the wagon stood, the general feeling was that the oracle about the untying of the knot had been fulfilled. Moreover, that very night there was lightning and thunder – a further sign from heaven; so Alexander, on the strength of all this, offered sacrifice the following day to the gods who had sent the from heaven and proclaimed the Loosing of the Knot." <ref> Arrian, Book II, 3</ref>
</blockquote/>It is difficult to say how much of the story of the Gordian Knot is myth and how much is factual. It could very well be that most, or all, of the story is in fact apocryphal, having been told in later years when the romantic tales of Alexander began to circulate throughout the Near East and Europe. Even if the story of the Gordian Knot is completely fiction, it does not diminish the symbolic importance of Gordium – the Macedonians and others believed that whomever held Gordium held the keys to conquering Asia.
===Conclusion===