looking for some information about buttons, i stumbled across this comment..
(clothing fasteners)...were large, dagger like pins. These pins were very popular in Athens, Greece until their outlawing in about 570 BC due to hundreds of angered Athenian women using their pins as real daggers to kill one Athenian soldier who bore bad news of all their men being slaughtered in war.

I've know the expression Don't kill the messenger--and the varient i used as topic heading, and now i am wondering, does the expression trace its way back to this incident? (even it is a modern expression, and brought to use via those scholars who know their history!) and what was the battle/ war that the messenger was reporting on.. (my own knowledge of exactly what was happening in 570BCE being a bit sketchy)