The work is important in connection with the transmission of the Alexander story in the Middle Ages.
[2][3] The appointment was unusual, as the emperor Constantine I had died the previous year, and custom prescribed that a new emperor – in this case, Constantine's sons – assumed the consulship in the year following his accession.
This led Timothy Barnes to suggest that Polemius, who was probably a general, played a leading role in the purge which killed many members of the imperial family in 337, securing the succession of Constantine's sons, and that he received the consulship as a belated reward for this service.
[4] In 345, the same Polemius was a comes under the emperor Constantius II, and wrote a letter to the exiled bishop of Alexandria, Athanasius, encouraging him to return to his see.
It only mentions the Epistola Alexandri ad Aristotelem in passing, which was thus often copied alongside it.