Polemon gave the dedicatory oration to Hadrian's Temple of Olympian Zeus in Athens, which G.W.

Bowersock speculates was "an embarrassing repudiation of the obvious person for the occasion, Herodes Atticus.

He was a priest of Dionysos and agonothetes of the athletic competitions that took place in Smyrna in honour of the emperor Hadrian.

Owing to Polemon's rhetorical skills the emperor stopped favoring Ephesos and endowed Smyrna with 10 million drachmae, which financed the building of a new grain market, a gymnasium, and a temple.

At the age of 56 and no longer able to stand the pain, he ordered his servants to lock him in his family tomb.

[6] The only fully surviving works of Polemon are his funeral orations for the Athenians generals Callimachus and Cynaegirus, who died at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC.