Zenon supported Hybreas, an orator and prominent politician in Mylasa (the chief city of Caria).
Zenon encouraged the locals to resist Labienus and King Pacorus I of Parthia, when their armies invaded Syria and Anatolia in 40 BC.
[4] Zenon was a friend and ally of Roman Triumvir Mark Antony and played a leading role during the Parthian invasion.
According to Appian, Mark Antony established client kings in the eastern areas of the Roman Empire, which were under his control, on condition that they paid a tribute.
In Anatolia Polemon was appointed to part of Cilicia, Darius, the son of Pharnaces II and grandson of Mithridates VI, to Pontus, and Amyntas to Pisidia.
[5] According to Cassius Dio, in 36 BC Polemon took part in Mark Antony's campaign against Parthia.
This was successful, and in 31 BC, when the agreement was finalised, Antony gave Polemon Lesser Armenia as a reward.
[7] In 26 BC, Polemon, whom Cassius Dio described as the king of Pontus, “was enrolled among the friends and allies of the Roman people; and the privilege was granted the senators of occupying the front seats in all the theatres of his realm.”[8] Strabo gave an indication of how Polemon might have become a king of Pontus.
He wrote Polemon and Lycomedes of Comana attacked Arsaces, one of the sons of Pharnaces II of Pontus, in Sagylium because he “was playing the dynast and attempting a revolution without permission from any of the prefects …” This stronghold was seized, but Arsaces fled to the mountains where he starved because he was without provisions and without water.
Polemon must have assumed a royal title in Pontus due to the part he played in suppressing Arsaces.
He married Asander's wife, Dynamis, the daughter of Pharnaces II, who had been entrusted with the regency of the kingdom by her husband.
Strabo also wrote that after Polemon's death “his [second] wife Pythodorida of Pontus [was] in power, being queen, not only of the Colchians, but also of Trapezus and Pharnacia and of the barbarians who live above these places …”[14] Through his first wife, Dynamis, Polemon became stepfather to Tiberius Julius Aspurgus, her son from her first marriage.
She possessed the cities of Sidene and Themiscyra Phanaroea, close to Pharnacia, the area between the rivers Lycus (Kelkit) and Iris (Yeşilırmak), which included the cities of Magnopolis, Amaseia, and Cabeira (which Pompey had renamed Diospolis), Kainon Chorion, plus Zelitis and Megalopolitis.