The participles φαμένων and λέγοντες produce a clear syntactical discontinuity, and the phrase φαμένων εἶναι ἀνάθημα is rather abrupt. Solutions so far proposed are as follows. Replacing φαμένων εἶναι with φασὶ μὲν ὦν ἐκείνων (Jackson, probante Wilson) resolves both problems and is palaeographically plausible. Nevertheless, the sentence becomes less concise because φασὶ refers to the opinion of a third party, which in this case does not seem necessary. Abicht tried to preserve the transmitted text by adding only the pronoun σφέων after φαμένων, so that the newly resulting possession to the Lacedaemonians becomes clearer. More recently, Madvig's conjecture τῶν τῷ χρυσέῳ ἐπιγέγραπται Λακεδαιμονίων φάμενον εἶναι ἀνάθημα, οὐκ ὀρθῶς λέγον has been well received,Footnote ¹ providing as it does a text in which the vessel on which the inscription was to be read clearly appears as a ‘speaking object’.Footnote ²

Herodotus is describing his visit to Delphi, during which time he had the opportunity to see the monuments and read the inscriptions himself, including those that had been rewritten to falsify the ownership of individual artefacts. In this passage, he focusses on the text of a specific inscription, with the genitive plural Λακεδαιμονίων referring to the Spartans’ claim that the vessel is their own offering to the temple of Delphi. But immediately afterwards he states that the basin belongs to Croesus and that one of the inhabitants of Delphi was responsible for the inscription, seeking to gain the goodwill of the Lacedaemonians.Footnote ³ What the genitive plural of the inscription seemed to claim as a property right of the Lacedaemonians (Λακεδαιμονίων) becomes meaningful if we add a dative of advantage (σφι) after the verb of saying (φαμένων), so that the Lacedaemonians are presented as the active claimer of the basin offered to Apollo, even though the operation of falsification was concocted without their knowledge by some Delphian.

In this light, write φαμένων <σφι> εἶναι ἀνάθημα. The dative is particularly welcome because, in similar passages where the attribution of a votive offering is specified, the author introduces the dative of the donor.Footnote ⁴ This pronoun might have been more easily overlooked than Abicht's σφέων, especially since the two consecutive syllables with -ι and εἶ- could be confused owing to itacism. Moreover, in Herodotus σφί/σφι (9 + 597x) is much more common than σφέων/σφεων (42 + 60x). Nor does this slight emendation risk oversmoothing Herodotus’ prose, which is at times rough, probably owing to a partial revision of the text by the author himself.Footnote ⁵

Furthermore, it would be sufficient to imply here an αὐτῶν immediately after φαμένων to grasp the continuity between the Lacedaemonians and those who claim ownership of the offering. In this regard, one could also correct λέγοντες to λεγόντων since this would avoid the above-mentioned anacoluthon. However, anacoluthon is part of Herodotus’ prose,Footnote ⁶ and in this case the unexpected nominative plural rhetorically highlights the false character of the inscription Λακεδαιμονίων more emphatically.Footnote ⁷ The transmitted λέγοντες, in fact, constitutes an example of a hanging nominative,Footnote ⁸ which points to a certain deviation in the regularity of the syntactic-grammatical links, without affecting the sense of the sentence.Footnote ⁹

These emendations result in the following text and translation: