Polyaenus (flourished 2nd centuryad) was a Macedonian rhetorician and pleader who lived in Rome and was the author of a work entitledStrategica (orStrategemata), which he dedicated to the emperorsMarcus Aurelius andLucius Verus on the outbreak of the Parthian War (162–165).

TheStrategica, stillextant, is a historical collection of stratagems and maxims of militarystrategy written in Greek and strung together in the form of anecdotes; it also includes examples of wisdom, courage, and cunning from civil and political life.Comprising eight books (parts of the sixth and seventh are lost), it originally contained 900anecdotes, of which 833 are extant. The major sources for the anecdotes are the Greek historians andPlutarch. Despite its many errors of judgment and fact, its contents have some historical value. Evidently highly esteemed by the Roman emperors, it was handed down by them as a sort of heirloom and passed to Constantinople, where it was diligently studied by theByzantineemperorLeo VI, who himself wrote a work on tactics.