Polemon of Laodicea was a Greek sophist and geographer of the 2nd century CE and a leading figure of the Second Sophistic. A native of Laodicea on the Lycus, he was a student of Scopelian and a contemporary of Herodes Atticus. Renowned for his oratory and combative personality, he gained great influence, particularly in Smyrna, where he secured citizenship and imperial favors from the emperor Hadrian. He died in old age and was buried at Smyrna.

His literary output is fragmentary. He composed celebrated speeches and declamations, now lost. His geographical works, the basis for his classification as a geographer, include On the Dedications in Cities and On Macedonia, which provide antiquarian descriptions of monuments and local histories. A spurious treatise on physiognomy is also attributed to him.

Polemon exemplifies the traveling sophist who wielded cultural and political authority in the Greek East under Roman rule. The fragments of his geographical works offer valuable, if sometimes criticized, insights into the monuments and civic traditions of the Hellenic world. His career is primarily documented in Philostratus’s Lives of the Sophists.