When Cortés and his men arrived in Tenochtitlan, Moctezuma II, who precariously ruled over a large empire, chose to welcome Cortés as an honored guest, rather than risk a war which might quickly be joined by aggrieved indigenous people. Moctezuma may have feared that Cortés was the returning god Quetzalcoatl, because the Spanish arrival coincided with the close of an Aztec calendar cycle consistent with such a return. This claim is found in the Florenino Codex, among other early sources, and accepted as true in many later histories. However, some scholars doubt it.[18]