The job is tough and disreputable, but not exactly brutal the 62-year-old Gordianus seldom has to imitate Alexander and resort to the sword.
Gordianus, also known as the Finder, makes a living asking questions, dredging up secrets, and bouncing back and forth between the scheming politicians of Rome in the last century before Christ.
It's also the inspiration behind the name author Steven Saylor gave to his fictional detective: Gordianus, star of a series of historical mysteries set in ancient Rome, the newest of which is A Mist of Prophecies. The moniker "Gordian" is used by a Nebraska book imprint, a Hungarian music company and a Tennessee health-care consulting concern, to list but a few. He pondered the problem for a while before muttering, "It makes no difference how it is loosed." And, drawing his sword, he severed the knot with one stroke.Īs a metaphor for unconventional problem-solving, the legend of the Gordian knot has proved hugely popular. But the knot remained tied until the day that Alexander the Great rode into town.īent on conquering Asia, with army in tow, Alexander could not pass up the Gordian knot and its legend. Lured by a prophecy that whoever managed to undo the knot would become the ruler of all Asia, many nimble-fingered challengers attempted to unravel its threads. The legend of the Gordian knot runs roughly thus: For centuries, an oxcart sat in a temple square in Turkey, its yoke and shaft bound by an elaborate knot. We just have an enormous amount of literary source material that tells us not just what happened, but how did these people really think, what motivated them, what were their personalities like? And the great people on the world stage, how did their personalities clash? We have a lot of drama. "With the Romans, we have cookbooks, letters, erotic poetry, political speeches, natural history.
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