The Herodotean passage (8. 73. 3), where the historian describes the people dwelling in the Peloponnese and their ethnicity, raises a textual problem: the ethnic Ὀρνεῆται is inconsistent with the passage and modern scholars have suggested several solutions either for an emendation of the text or for an alternative exegesis of the term. This paper discusses the previous proposals and offers a new emendation based on a passage from Pausanias.