Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/234

218 HISTORY OF GREECE. see approaching in a wagon. Gordius and Midas happened to be then coming into the town in their wagon, and the crown was conferred upon them : their wagon was consecrated in the citadel of Gordium to Zeus Basileus, and became celebrated from the insoluble knot whereby the yoke was attached, and the severance of it afterwards by the sword of Alexander the Great. Whosoever could untie the knot, to him the kingdom of Asia was portended, and Alexander was the first whose sword both fulfilled the condition and realized the prophecy. 1 Of these legendary Phrygian names and anecdotes we can make no use for historical purposes. "We know nothing of any Phrygian kings, during the historical times, but Herodotus tells us of a certain Midas son of Gordius, king of Phrygia, who was the first foreign sovereign that ever sent offerings to the Delphian temple, anterior to Gyges of Lydia. This Midas ded- icated to the Delphian god the throne on which he was in the habit of sitting to administer justice. Chronologers have referred the incident to a Phrygian king Midas placed by Eusebius in the 10th Olympiad, a supposition which there are no means of verifying. 2 There may have been a real Midas king of Gordium ; but that there was ever any great united Phrygian monarchy, we have not the least ground for supposing. The name Gordiua son of Midas again appears in the legend of Oresus and Solon told by Herodotus, as part of the genealogy of the ill-fated prince Adrastus : here too it seems to represent a legendary rather than a real person. 3 Of the Lydians, I shall speak in the following chapter. 1 Arrian, ii, 3 ; Justin, xi, 7. According to another tale, Midas was son of the Great Mother heneU (Plutarch, Caesar, 9 ; Hygin. fab. 191). 1 Herodot. i, 14, with Wesseling's note. Herodot. i, 34.