2 Maccabees 13:3–8

³Menelaus also joined them and with utter hypocrisy urged Antiochus on, not for the sake of his country’s welfare but because he thought that he would be established in office.^{* 4}But the King of kings aroused the anger of Antiochus against the scoundrel, and when Lysias informed him that this man was to blame for all the trouble, he ordered them to take him to Beroea and to put him to death by the method that is customary in that place.^{* 5}For there is a tower there, fifty cubits high, full of ashes, and it has a rim running around it that on all sides inclines precipitously into the ashes. ⁶There they all push to destruction anyone guilty of sacrilege or notorious for other crimes.^{* 7}By such a fate it came about that Menelaus the lawbreaker died, without even burial in the earth.^{* 8}And this was eminently just; because he had committed many sins against the altar whose fire and ashes were holy, he met his death in ashes.