1. Once, when the Samian envoys spoke too long, the Spartans told them: “We have forgotten the first part of your speech and did not follow the rest, because we had forgotten the first.”

2. When an orator who had dragged out his speech demanded an answer to take back to his fellow citizens, the Spartans said: “Tell them that you barely finished your speech and we barely sat through it.”

(Plutarch on unknown Spartans, in his book Table Talk.)