A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

2. Son of Omphalion, was king or tyrant of Pisa in Elis at the period of the 34th Olympiad (B. C. 644), assembled an army, with which he made himself master of Olympia, and assumed by force the sole presidency of the Olympic games on that occasion. The Eleans on this account would not reckon this as one of the regular Olympiads. (Paus. 6.21.1, 22.2.) We learn also from Strabo that Pantaleon assisted the Messenians in the second Messenian war (Strab. viii. p.362), which, according to the chronology of Pausanias, followed by Mr. Clinton, must have been as much as thirty years before; but C. O. Müller and Mr. Grote regard the intervention of Pantaleon as furnishing the best argument for the real date of the war in question. (Clinton, F. H. vol. i. p. 188; Müller's Dorians, vol. i. p. 171; Grote's Greece, vol. ii. p. 574.)