2 Maccabees 13:3–8

³Menelaus also joined himself with them, and with great dissimulation encouraged Antiochus, not for the safeguard of the country, but because he thought to have been made governor. ⁴But the King of kings moved Antiochus’ mind against this wicked wretch, and Lysias informed the king that this man was the cause of all mischief, so that the king commanded to bring him unto Berea, and to put him to death, as the manner is in that place. ⁵Now there was in that place a tower of fifty cubits high, full of ashes, and it had a round instrument which on every side hanged down into the ashes. ⁶And whosoever was condemned of sacrilege, or had committed any other grievous crime, there did all men thrust him unto death. ⁷Such a death it happened that wicked man to die, not having so much as burial in the earth; and that most justly: ⁸For inasmuch as he had committed many sins about the altar, whose fire and ashes were holy, he received his death in ashes.