Panhellenic World

The Olympic Games were a Panhellenic festival celebrated at the sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia in Elis that drew athletes from cities around the Greek world. Hosted every four years from the first games in 776 BCE on, the "Olympiad" became a standard dating system found across Greek and Roman historical writing.

Several so-called "victor lists" survive from antiquity, but are fragmentary in terms of dates and their recorded events. The most complete list comes from Eusebius of Caesarea, a 4th century Christian historiographer writing under the Roman Empire. For every Olympiad, Eusebius records the winner of the stadion (a sprint race) and their hometown, along with occassional other details from that year.

When mapped, the victor list provides a visual record of cities who participated in the games overtime and represents the expanding Panhellic world.

Please interact with the maps by zooming in and clicking on points to learn more.

Note: All data was drawn from Christensen and Martirosova-Torlone's translation of Eusebius' Olympic Victor List and entered by students in HIST 3052 at the University of Minnesota (2022). These maps do not claim to be authoritative and may contain errors.