Strabo, Geography

Be this as it may, they say that Alexander founded eight cities in Bactriana and Sogdiana, and that he razed certain cities to the ground, among which was Cariatae in Bactriana, in which Callisthenes was seized and imprisoned, and Maracanda and Cyra in Sogdiana, Cyra being the last city founded by Cyrus¹ and being situated on the Iaxartes River, which was the boundary of the Persian empire; and that although this settlement was fond of Cyrus, he razed it to the ground because of its frequent revolts; and that through a betrayal he took also two strongly fortified rocks, one in Bactriana, that of Sisimithres, where Oxyartes kept his daughter Rhoxana, and the other in Sogdiana, that of Oxus, though some call it the rock of Ariamazes. Now writers report that that of Sisimithres is fifteen stadia in height and eighty in circuit, and that on top it is level and has a fertile soil which can support five hundred men, and that here Alexander met with sumptuous hospitality and married Rhoxana, the daughter of Oxyartes; but the rock in Sogdiana, they say, is twice as high as that in Bactriana. And near these places, they say, Alexander destroyed also the city of the Branchidae, whom Xerxes had settled there—people who voluntarily accompanied him from their homeland—because of the fact that they had betrayed to him the riches and treasures of the god at Didymi. Alexander destroyed the city, they add, because he abominated the sacrilege and the betrayal.