Herodotus tells in The Histories about a war between Sparta and Tegea. In it, the Spartans were “so confident of reducing the men of Tegea to slavery” that they literally brought chains with them. But they lost, having dreadfully underestimated their enemy, and with poetic justice the prisoners were “forced to wear on their own legs the chains they had brought.” Gawker’s depositions would prove not dissimilar.
