A valiant resistance was with Alexander always a sufficient motive for the most sanguinary reprisals. Arimages, who defended a fortified rock in Sogdia, thought his position so strong that when summoned to surrender, he asked tauntingly whether Alexander could fly; and for this offence, when, unable to hold out any longer, Arimages and his relations descended to Alexander’s camp to beg for quarter, Alexander had them first of all flogged and then crucified at the foot of the rock they had so bravely defended.[136] After the long siege of Tyre, Alexander had 2,000 Tyrians, over and above the 6,000 who fell during the storming of that city, nailed to crosses along the shore,[137] perhaps in reprisal for a violation of the laws of war--for Quintus Curtius declares that the Tyrians had murdered some Macedonian ambassadors, and Arrian, who makes no mention of the crucifixion, declares that they slew some Macedonian prisoners and threw them from their walls--but more probably (since there were evidently different stories of the Tyrians’ offence) on account simply of the obstinate resistance they had offered to Alexander’s attack. The Macedonian conqueror regarded his whole expedition against Persia as an act of reprisals for the invasion of Greece by Xerxes, 150 years before his own time. When he set fire to the Persian capital and palace, Persepolis, he justified himself against Parmenio’s remonstrances on the ground that it was in revenge for the destruction of the temples in Greece during the Persian invasion;[138] and this motive was constantly present with him, in justification both of the war itself and of particular atrocities connected with it. In the course of his expedition, he came to a city of the Branchidæ, whose ancestors at Miletus had betrayed the treasures of a temple in their charge to Xerxes, and had by him been removed from Miletus to Asia. As Greeks they met Alexander’s army with joy, and at once surrendered their city to him. The next day, after reflection given to the matter, Alexander had every single inhabitant of the city slain, in spite of their powerlessness, in spite of their supplications, in spite of their community of language and origin. He even had the walls of the city dug up from their foundation, and the trees of their sacred groves uprooted, that not a trace of their city might remain.[139]