Declamationes
Smyrna
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Marcus Antonius Polemon
Marcus Antonius Polemon
c. 90 CE–c. 144 CE · Smyrna
Marcus Antonius Polemon (c. 90-144 CE) was a Greek orator of the Second Sophistic, based at Smyrna, where he was a leading public figure and enjoyed the favor of the emperors Trajan and Hadrian. He was one of the most celebrated and influential sophists of his age, and a treatise on physiognomy (judging character from appearance) attributed to him survives mainly in later translation. He is prominently featured in Philostratus's 'Lives of the Sophists.'
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SmyrnaIonia (Asia Minor)
We know they were here, but the specifics of what they did at this stop aren’t recorded yet in our corpus.
About Smyrna
Smyrna, modern İzmir on the Aegean coast of Turkey, was an ancient Greek city refounded in the fourth century BCE and, under Rome, a leading port of the province of Asia. It was a centre of rhetoric: the sophist Marcus Antonius Polemon taught there, the orator Aelius Aristides was closely associated with it, and it was one of several places claiming to be Homer's birthplace. Its church is one of the seven addressed in the Book of Revelation, and its second-century bishop Polycarp, to whom Ignatius of Antioch wrote and whom Irenaeus knew in his youth, was martyred there. The mathematician Theon of Smyrna and the epic poet Quintus Smyrnaeus take their names from the city.
In Smyrna at the same time
Across the traditions, in Smyrna at the same time
In the same place & time
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Sages whose lives overlapped with Marcus Antonius Polemon’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
Across the traditions
In the same tradition
The world in their lifetime
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Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Marcus Antonius Polemon’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.