We have now completed our examination of Olympionikai. As a full conspectus of the conclusions reached above can be found in Section 1.4, there is no need to review the preceding discussion. Clarification of the relationship between the numerous Olympionikai we have encountered would be desirable, but, for reasons detailed in Appendix 17, this is not possible beyond a very simple point. It is, however, worthwhile to return in a more informed manner to a subject treated in Section 1.1, the reasons that Olympic victor lists repay careful attention. There are five issues that merit consideration.

First, the understanding that Olympionikai were a distinct form of literary expression, along with familiarity with each of the three distinct types of Olympionikai, makes it possible to study with greater effectiveness all the extant examples of such works, some of which are texts of considerable importance. A good example can be found in Diodorus Siculus' Olympiad chronicle. The fact that the Bibliotheca is an Olympionikai has been largely ignored in the relevant scholarship. This has obscured a factor that must have influenced many of Diodorus' authorial choices. Speaking more generally, modern scholars interested in any individual Olympionikai are likely to benefit substantially from a general knowledge of Olympionikai as a group, or more precisely, as three closely related subgroups.

The second reason that Olympic victor lists hold interest for modern scholars is that Olympiad chronicles were one of the basic sources of information used by literate ancient Greeks.

Tracing relationships between Olympionikai is a complex task because earlier versions influenced later ones in numerous, overlapping ways that are hard to document. Each of the three different types of Olympionikai fulfilled a relatively narrow range of functions and thus tended to contain a similar array of material arranged in similar ways. There was, in addition, an unusually high level of interconnection among Olympionikai. Later authors who compiled catalogs of Olympic victors did not feel compelled to visit Olympia and carry out their own search of the relevant records going back to the first Olympiad. They found it far more expedient to take a preexisting catalog and make the requisite additions and modifications. This is reflected in the fact that, in the places where the preserved Olympionikai overlap, they show little variation in regard to victors' names, dates, and hometowns. (The relevant information is displayed in chart form below.) The striking uniformity in the victor catalogs of Olympionikai of widely variant dates demonstrates the degree to which later authors depended upon their predecessors. Authors of Olympionikai no doubt also took from their predecessors a considerable amount of information above and beyond victors' names. Olympionikai compiled after Hippias were, therefore, to a greater or lesser degree composites of earlier, similar works. A final difficulty springs from the fact that most Olympionikai survive in fragmentary condition and many are lost entirely.

FGrH 259 T1 apud Eusebius Chronographia 125.15–16 Karst:

This chapter is devoted to an in-depth exploration of Olympionikon anagraphai (treatises that provided detailed information about Olympia and the Olympic Games in addition to a victor catalog). It focuses on two closely related issues: (1) the history, structure, and contents of Olympionikon anagraphai and (2) the structure and contents of standard catalogs of Olympic victors. Standard catalogs, which were initially incorporated into Olympionikon anagraphai, were later circulated as independent documents, but there was strong continuity in their structure and contents. This makes it reasonable to treat Olympionikon anagraphai and standard catalogs of Olympic victors simultaneously.

The textual evidence is summarized in Table 10 (Olympionikon anagraphai are indicated in bold type). There are also a number of sources that provide further insight into Olympionikon anagraphai, including the Pythionikon Anagraphe (Register of Victors in the Pythian Games) compiled by Aristotle and Callisthenes, Pausanias' description of Olympia and the Olympic Games, and Philostratus' De Gymnastica.

Standard catalogs were cumulative registers of Olympic victors that began with the first Olympiad and typically ran down to the time they were compiled. They listed the winners in all events and were organized by numbered Olympiads. Within each Olympiad the contests were listed in an order based upon a division between gymnic and hippic events and upon the order in which events were added to the Olympic program. Standard catalogs were relatively terse.

There were two different kinds of Olympiad chronicle. One kind listed winners in all events, the other only stadion victors. In both cases the text of the chronicle was organized around a framework of numbered Olympiads. Individual years within Olympiads were identified either by ordinal numbers or by Athenian archons or Roman consuls. Historical notices, of variable length and detail, were attached to the entry for each Olympiad.

The victor catalogs in Olympiad chronicles typically began with Olympiad 1 and ran down to the time they were compiled. The starting points of the historical accounts in six Olympiad chronicles are known, and five of the six began before or with 776. Insofar as the treatment of the years after 776 was organized around numbered Olympiads, the authors of these chronicles must have started their victor catalogs with the first Olympiad. The end points of five Olympiad chronicles are known, and four of the five ran up to the author's own time. The sole exception in both cases was Dionysius of Halicarnassus' Antiquitates Romanae. Dionysius began with the origins of Rome, but his victor catalog did not start until the 68th Olympiad (508). He also did not take his account down to his own time, but instead ended with the outbreak of the First Punic War in 264. Dionysius' work was exceptional because he tailored the Olympiad framework to fit Roman history and the existing historiographical tradition on Rome.

The following discussion of Hippias and his Olympic victor list is divided into nine sections. The first section (2.1) reviews the evidence that links the earliest cumulative catalog of Olympic victors to Hippias and fixes a date of c. 400 for the appearance of his Olympionikai. The second section (2.2) explores the historical context in which Hippias produced his Olympionikai. The conclusions from Sections 2.1 and 2.2 are then used, along with the relevant ancient sources, to establish insofar as possible the content of Hippias' Olympionikai (2.3). The single most debated question in the previous scholarship on Olympionikai has been whether Hippias drew on archival sources, and hence simply published existing records, or whether he used a diverse array of sources and thus actually compiled the Olympic victor list himself. This controversy is of some importance because, if Hippias did not have archival sources at his disposal, the accuracy of the early parts of the Olympic victor list must be considered dubious. After a review of the previous scholarship (2.4), the evidence for documentary sources from the eighth century is examined (2.5), as are inconsistencies in the dates given in the ancient sources for early events at Olympia (2.6). The conclusion that Hippias compiled rather than published the first Olympic victor list means that it is necessary to explore the nature of the sources on which he drew in doing so (2.7) and the means by which he established 776 as the date for the first Olympiad (2.8).

There was an inscription at Sicyon that gave a history of music and that seems to have included a list of Sicyonian kings. This inscription is of some importance in the present context because it was probably used by both Menaechmus of Sicyon (see Appendix 15) and Castor of Rhodes (see Section 5.4).

The Sicyon inscription is known through two references in the Pseudo-Plutarch's De Musica:

The date at which the inscription was cut can be fixed within relatively narrow limits. A terminus post quem is supplied by the use of the priestesses of Hera at Argos, which means that the inscription almost certainly postdates the publication of the list of priestesses by Hellanicus in the last third of the fifth century.

Aristotle and Callisthenes were not the first authors to write on the history of the Pythian Games at Delphi. There was a slightly earlier work on this subject by the historian Menaechmus of Sicyon. It is necessary to consider this work in some detail in order to clarify its relationship with the Aristotelian Pythionikai and to establish the ways in which Aristotle's and Callisthenes' treatise on the Pythian Games broke new ground.

The list of Aristotle's work compiled by Hesychius contains one significant piece of information that is not found in the version of the list transmitted by Diogenes, the statement ἐν ᾧ Μέναιχμον ἐνίκησεν attached to Πυθιονίκας βιβλίον. This statement was evidently taken from Andronicos' treatise on the Aristotelian corpus (first century) and added to the Hesychian list by one of its editors.

In his analysis of this material, Paul Moraux understood ἐνίκησεν to mean that the amphictyons held a competition to produce a Pythionikai in which Aristotle and Callisthenes outdid Menaechmus. As Angelos Chaniotis has pointed out, this is unlikely because there is no evidence for contests of this sort at Delphi or anywhere else in the Greek world. August Brinkmann had made the same suggestion at an earlier date and pointed to the competition that the Messenians held for a war memorial at Olympia, the result of which was the Nike of Paionios.