ABSTRACT
Those scholars who doubt that in early times the Eleians took control of Olympia from the people of a polity called 'Pisa' led by a certain Pantaleon and his sons seem correct. A revision of Archaic Peloponnesian chronology suggests, however, that the relevant reports were inspired by actual persons and events of the late Archaic period and the first decade of the Classical. If so, they would seem to indicate that during the decades around the turn of the fifth century BC a popular movement among the Eleians concentrated in the Alpheios valley and the coastal districts of the region had challenged the authority of the aristocratically based Olympic Council. From the end of the Eleian War until the Spartan defeat at the battle of Leuktra in 371 BC, all the states in the region remained loyal allies of the Lakedaimonians and seem to have retained their oligarchic constitutions.
