The Phrygians were an Indo–European people who originally lived in the southern Balkans. They were without a king, but an oracle at Telmissus (the ancient capital of Lycia, a neighbouring region) 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. Out of gratitude, his son Midas dedicated the ox–cart to the Phrygian god Sabazios (whom the Greeks identified with Zeus) and tied it to a post with an intricate knot of cornel bark. (The cornel is a plant of the dogwood family). The knot was later described by the Roman historian Quintus Curtius Rufus as comprising "several knots all so tightly entangled that it was impossible to see how they were fastened."
The ox–cart still stood in the palace of the former kings of Phrygia at Gordium in the fourth century BCE, when Alexander arrived. By this time Phrygia had been reduced to a 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. 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.
In an alternative version of the story, Alexander loosened the knot by pulling the linchpin from the yoke of the cart.
Sources from antiquity agree that Alexander was confronted with the challenge of the knot, but his solution is disputed. Some say that Alexander pulled the knot out of its pole pin, exposing the two ends of the cord; this allowed him to untie the knot without having to cut through it.
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