Cut the Gordian Knot

Legend says an oracle in the Phrygian capital of Gordium decreed that whoever untied an elaborate knot binding an old ox-cart to a post would rule Asia. When Alexander the Great arrived in 333 BC, he is said to have solved it, but ancient accounts disagree on exactly how. The historians Plutarch and Arrian, both writing centuries after the event, describe Alexander simply pulling out the cart's linchpin, loosening the knot without cutting anything. The more dramatic version, that he sliced through it with his sword, is the one popular memory has kept, and it's the version that gives the modern idiom its bladed, decisive edge, even though it isn't the version the more careful ancient sources describe.