Having thus settled the Aetolian business to their liking, the courtiers turned their attention to the ceremony of instituting the king into the management of his office, called the _Anacleteria_. His age was not indeed yet so far advanced as to make this necessary; but they thought that the kingdom would gain a certain degree of firmness and a fresh impulse towards prosperity, if it were known that the king had assumed the independent direction of the government. They then made the preparations for the ceremony with great splendour, and carried it out in a manner worthy of the greatness of the kingdom, Polycrates being considered to have contributed very largely to the accomplishment of their efforts. For this man had enjoyed even during his youth, in the reign of the late king, a reputation second to no one in the court for fidelity and practical ability; and this reputation he had maintained during the present reign also. For having been entrusted with the management of Cyprus and its revenues, when its affairs were in a critical and complicate state, he not only preserved the island for the young king, but collected a very considerable sum of money, with which he had just arrived and had paid to the king, after handing over the government of Cyprus to Ptolemy of Megalopolis. But though he obtained great applause by this, and a large fortune immediately afterwards, yet, as he grew older, he drifted into extravagant debauchery and scandalous indulgence. Nor was the reputation of Ptolemy, son of Agesarchus very different in the later part of his life. But in regard to these men, when we come to the proper time, I shall not shrink from stating the circumstances which disgraced their official life.... BOOK XIX The only fragment we possess of the nineteenth book of Polybius is a statement quoted by Plutarch as to M. Porcius Cato, to the effect that by his orders the walls of all the numerous Spanish cities north of the Baetis were dismantled on the same day. Cato was in Spain B.C. 195. The means taken by him to secure this simultaneous destruction of fortifications are told by Frontinus, _Strateg._ 1, 1, 1. We thus lose the history of the years B.C. 195, 194, 193; as well as the greater part of that of B.C. 192, 191, contained in the early part of book 20, of which only a few fragments remain. Livy, however, has evidently translated from Polybius in his history of these years, and a brief abstract of events in Greece may help the reader in following the fragmentary book which follows with more interest. B.C. 195. Lucius Valerius Flaccus, } Coss. M. Porcius Cato, }