Note 68:1 — Chapter III

The excerpt alluding to Polybius (printed in his text as vi. 2, 2) merely asserts that in the book of Aristodemus of Elis it was stated that no victors were recorded till the twenty-eighth Olympiad, when Corœbus the Elean won and was recorded as the first victor; from which time the Olympiads were then reckoned. Aristotle is reported to have called Lycurgus the founder (fr. 490). Aristodemus was later than Hippias (cf. above, p. 58); and still it is to his book, and not to old registers, that the Greek writers refer. The recurrence of the 28th as an improper Olympiad shows that this number had some important place in the whole discussion. I think it likely that Corœbus really belonged to the twenty-eighth after 776, and not to that year. The oldest actual record of a victor which Pausanias could find was from Ol. 33, and this he describes as of extraordinary antiquity. Other details are given in the Appendix.