Ancient Greeks were horrified by the Hebrew practice of circumcision. Antiochus Epiphanies, a descendent of one of Alexander the Great's greatest generals, for example, ruled that the rabbis who performed circumcision should be stoned or fed to wild dogs. Mothers who permitted their sons to become circumcised were "garroted, their strangled infants strung about their necks, and then hanged upon crosses as terrible warnings to others."h