Polĕmon
（
Πολέμων). The name of several Greek authors.
1.
Called Periegētes, the most celebrated of that class of
writers. (See
Periegetae.) Born in the district
of Troas, he afterwards settled at Athens, where he was presented with the citizenship
about B.C. 200. He there worked up the material which he had collected from inscriptions,
dedications, and public monuments of all kinds into a number of works (
inter
alia, on Athens, and on the holy road from Athens to Eleusis), which, in succeeding
times, were much quoted and highly valued as a mine of archaeological facts, and of important
points connected with the history of art. The fragments which are preserved enable us to
recognize him as a well-read author.
2.
Antonius Polĕmon, the Sophist or rhetorician; a native
of Laodicea, who lived in the first half of the second century A.D., and presided over a
flourishing school of rhetoric in Smyrna. He was much esteemed by his contemporaries and in
high favour with the emperors Trajan, Hadrian, and Antoninus Pius. Towards the end of his
life he was a martyr to the gout, and accordingly put an end to his life in his fifty-sixth
year by causing himself to be buried alive in the tomb of his ancestors at Laodicea. His fame
was founded principally on the pithiness and adroitness of his improvisations. There are
preserved two declamations by him, artificial variations upon the same
theme—funeral orations in honour of Cynaegirus and Callimachus, the generals who
fell at Marathon. They have been edited by Orelli
(Leipzig, 1819).
