The excitable temperament of Alexander, unfortunately, cannot always be ascribed to intemperance in drink. He began to be intoxicated with the idea that he was a semi-divine being, and he undertook to act the rôle of an avenging deity, in executing a ruthless sentence of destruction on a small Greek colony in Sogdiana, where dwelt the descendants of the people of Branchidæ, who generations before had betrayed to the Persians the treasures of a temple of Apollo not far from Miletus. The act had never been forgotten, and now Alexander caused all the inhabitants of the place to be massacred, and every vestige of it to be destroyed. An action like this was alien to the spirit of free Greece, and it marks the king’s progress in Oriental despotism. It is all the more a witness to his personal degradation that the Milesian men in his own army, to whom Alexander wished to leave the decision, could not themselves agree on the fate of the Branchidæ, and hence the initiative in the massacre was due to the savage sentiments of their leader. The pacification of Sogdiana took some time, owing to the rugged nature of the regions in the southern part of the province, but the campaign is chiefly noteworthy because it resulted in the marriage of Alexander with Roxane, the daughter of a native chieftain who had gallantly defended against the Macedonians a mountain fastness called the Sogdian Rock. It had never been noted in the career of the youthful conqueror that he was susceptible to the influence of women. Hence this sudden attachment was as unexpected as it was unpopular in the army. They disliked to have their king ally himself with an alien, and their lack of sympathy was accentuated because Alexander chose to marry his bride after the fashion of her country. The influence of the Oriental environment was seen also in the introduction of Persian court ceremonial. The king desired to make the custom of obeisance to royalty used by the Persians applicable also to the Greeks. Callisthenes, a nephew of Aristotle, who was attached to the army as official historiographer of the campaign, earned Alexander’s resentment because he sturdily refused to adopt the Persian ceremonial in the king’s presence. He was soon afterwards charged with being involved in a plot to murder Alexander, which originated because of the resentment held against the king by the royal pages, when one of their number, Hermolaus, was flogged and reduced from his position for a breach of etiquette in a boar hunt at which Alexander was present. Callisthenes, apparently because he was an intimate friend of Hermolaus and therefore assumed to be an accomplice in the plot, was hanged.