[484] Curtius, vii. 23; Plutarch de Serâ Numinis Vindictâ, p. 557 B; Strabo xi. p. 518: compare also xiv. p. 634, and xvii. p. 814. This last-mentioned passage of Strabo helps us to understand the peculiarly strong pious fervor with which Alexander regarded the temple and oracle of Branchidæ. At the time when Alexander went up to the oracle of Ammon in Egypt, for the purpose of affiliating himself to Zeus Ammon, there came to him envoys from Miletus, announcing that the oracle at Branchidæ, which had been silent ever since the time of Xerxes, had just begun to give prophecy, and had certified the fact that Alexander was the son of Zeus, besides many other encouraging predictions. The massacre of the Branchidæ by Alexander was described by Diodorus, but was contained in that part of the seventeenth book which is lost; there is a great lacuna in the MSS. after cap. 83. The fact is distinctly indicated in the table of contents prefixed to Book xvii. Arrian makes no mention of these descendants of the Branchidæ in Sogdiana, nor of the destruction of the town and its inhabitants by Alexander. Perhaps neither Ptolemy nor Aristobulus, said anything about it. Their silence is not at all difficult to explain, nor does it, in my judgment, impeach the credibility of the narrative. They do not feel under obligation to give publicity to the worst acts of their hero. [485] The Delphian oracle pronounced, in explaining the subjugation and ruin of Krœsus king of Lydia, that he had thereby expiated the sin of his ancestor in the fifth generation before (Herodot. i. 91: compare vi. 86). Immediately before the breaking out of the Peloponnesian war, the Lacedæmonians called upon the Athenians to expel the descendants of those who had taken part in the Kylonian sacrilege, 180 years before; they addressed this injunction with a view to procure the banishment of Perikles, yet still τοῖς θεοῖς πρῶτον τιμωροῦντες (Thucyd. i. 125-127). The idea that the sins of fathers were visited upon their descendants, even to the third and fourth generation, had great currency in the ancient world. [486] Diodor. xiii. 62. See Vol. X. Ch. lxxxi. p 413 of this History.