The Histories · 4.77

However I have heard also another story, told by the Peloponnesians, that Anacharsis was sent out by the king of the Scythians, and so made himself a disciple of Hellas; and that when he returned back he said to him that had sent him forth, that the Hellenes were all busied about every kind of cleverness except the Lacedemonians; but these alone knew how to exchange speech sensibly. This story however has been invented without any ground by the Hellenes themselves; and however that may be, the man was slain in the way that was related above.

Herodotus of Halicarnassus · trans. G. C. Macaulay, 1890
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