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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
On the subject of the Branchidae there are a few facts and some outstanding questions. The facts may be stated first. They are provided by literary evidence and one piece of archaeological evidence, which are generally accepted.
1 The sacred myth in which Apollo had a passionate love of Branchus (Strabo 634), and the derivation of the name Branchus from the Sanskrit ‘Brahman’, Latin ‘flamen’, according to How and Wells indicate that the cult was indeed pre-Hellenic in its origin. Delphi tried to claim seniority (Strabo 421). The Greek work βρ⋯γχος is onomatopoeic, meaning ‘hoarse’.
2 Like the transplanted Eretrians, these Branchidae had been out of touch with Greece for 150 years and preserved their language in an archaic form of dialect (Hdt. 6.119.4; Curt 7.5.29). For the amphorae see I. R. Pichikyan, ‘The city of the Branchidae’, Vestnik Drevnie Istorii 2(1991), 168–80 with n. 3; he does not give any date for the inscriptions. Dr P. Sommer very kindly sent me an offprint of this article. After the massacre of the Branchidae the name of the place as ‘Branchidae’ may have survived, as it had done at Didyma after the flight of the priests of that name. That Apollo Didymaeus was worshipped in Sogdiana in the Hellenistic period is shown by Pliny, for the altars were dedicated by a general ‘of Seleucus and Antiochus’
3 He used a similar phrase when he visited Tyre (Hdt. 2.44.1:
)
4 In A History of the Delphic Oracle(Oxford, 1939), p. 172.
5 In this passage Herodotus contrasted ‘men’ and ‘women’ with 
and he used the imperfect tenses for vividness. In the additional sentence beginningmarked two stages, the first being in the aorist passive
Then he resumed the imperfecttenses with 
and
The bestowing of the 'uplands‘ 
on the Carians fulfilled the oracle that ’others will care for our temple‘, that is ‘others’ than the Milesians (to whom the oracle was addressed) or ‘other’ than the previous carers, the Branchidae. For the position of Didyma in the uplands see the map in RE 5.1 (1903), 439.
6 In using the rare word προστραγωδεῖ Strabo may have been commenting on the rhetorical style of Callisthenes as well as on the sensational nature of the oracles about Alexander's descent from Zeus and his future achievements.
7 The entry comes just after Alexander's advance 'through the desert' on his way to reach the river Oxus in midsummer 329. The Branchidae were on the far side of the river, that is in Sogdiana, the north-easternmost province of the Persian Empire.
8 The place-name persisted as an alternative to ‘Didyma’ throughout antiquity.
9 Hdt. 8.90.1, when the Phoenicians accused the Ionians of treachery during the battle of Salamis.
10 That is the Milesians in Miletus. For the contrast between Miletus and Didyma see Hdt. 6.19.3.
11 Seen. 6above
12 The sequence of publication was Callisthenes, Cleitarchus, Aristobulus, and then Hieronymus. Of them Callisthenes was not trusted because he was a propagandist, and Cleitarchus made false statements, some of which were corrected (e.g. Curt. 9.5.21, and with regard to the Amazons Strabo 505 and Arr. 7.13.3).
13 For this meaning see LSJs.v. I 2. The killing of the adult males and the enslaving of the rest are implied by Curtius 7.5.32, ‘diripere urbem’ and ‘ipsosque ad unum caedere’; for the women and the children were part of the booty in the sacking of the city.
14 In Alexander the Great: King, Commander and Statesman(2nd edn, Bristol, 1989), p. 198 and Sources for Alexander the Great (Cambridge,1993), p.242Google Scholar
15 Even more so for Callisthenes to have invented a massacre which did not occur, as Tarn supposed (Alexander the Great [Cambridge, 1948 and 1979], 2.274). For his work was published quickly, and the army would have known what the truth was
16 Alexander continued to pay tribute to Apollo: for the safe arrival of Nearchus and his fleet (Arr. Ind. 36.3), and in his plan to build two magnificent temples for Apollo at Delos and Delphi (Diod. 18.4.5). For the genuineness of Alexander's last plans, see the Appendix in my Alexander the Great (n. 14), pp. 281–285
17 For my acceptance of this passage see my Philip of Macedon (London, 1994), p. 48 with n. 6 on p. 200. For a different view, see G. T. Griffith in A History of Macedonia 2.274–7, in which he considered the idea of sacrilege to have been ‘a ramp’ and the drowning of prisoners to have been ‘not a civilized practice’ in the fourth century.
18 Of the literature on this subject the arguments of Tarn in CR 36 (1922), 63–6 and in Alexander the Great (n. 15), pp. 272–5 prevailed for some time; thus L. Pearson wrote in The Lost Histories of Alexander the Great (American Philological Association, 1960), p. 240, that ‘the massacre is, as most critics agree, a fiction’. The strongest reaction came with an article by H. W. Parke in JHS 105 (1985), 59–68, in which he argued that the massacre did take place—but his arguments were far from convincing. Other writers simply omitted any mention of the episode. A. B. Bosworth in Conquest and Empire (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 108–9 thought that ‘a massacre probably had taken place’, and in his n. 251 he cited J. M. Bigwood in Phoenix 32 (1978), 37, n. 1 as supporting Tarn and H. Bellen in Chiron 4 (1974), 63–5 as anticipating Parke's view. These writers did not make a thorough analysis of all the evidence, such as I have attempted here.