 Homerus of Byzantium is said to have written of Alexander the Great (356–323 BC) saving a soldier from asphyxiation by making an incision with the tip of his sword in the man's trachea.Despite the concerns of Hippocrates, Galen of Pergamon (129–199) and Aretaeus of Cappadocia (both of whom lived in Rome in the 2nd century AD) credit Asclepiades of Bithynia (ca.124–40 BC) as being the first physician to perform a non-emergency tracheotomy.