W. K. Pritchett has recently argued that officials in Argos memorized the list of priestesses of Hera at Argos, and it is worth considering whether officials at Olympia might have memorized the names of Olympic victors (and then transmitted those names to Hippias). The two key pieces of evidence that are typically highlighted in regard to the memorization of information in Archaic Greece are the Homeric rhapsodes, who were clearly capable of considerable feats of memory, and the existence of officially appointed mnemones in many Greek communities. The parallels with the Olympic victor list, however, are inexact in both cases. The accurate transmission of substantial amounts of memorized information over the course of multiple generations was a time-consuming undertaking and only the most important information could receive this treatment. As Astrid Möller and Nino Luraghi point out, “a society as such does not remember for the sake of remembering: the image of the past plays a role in the legitimation, justification, reconciliation and transformation of persons, groups or social structures.”

The Homeric rhapsodes memorized great literary works that reflected and expressed many of the fundamental values that defined Greek culture. Mnemones were magistrates who carried out a number of functions, including the preservation, either in memory or in writing, of laws and judicial decisions. The operation of the legal system was a critical part of the functioning of Greek communities, particularly after the formation of more centralized political units in the eighth century, and it is easy to see why communities would have invested time and energy in maintaining a record of the basic structuring principles on which that system operated—laws and precedents.