Book 24
6
About the same time king Ptolemy, wishing to make Ptolemy Epiphanes sends a present to the Achaeans. Lycortas, Polybius, and Aratus sent to return thanks, B.C. 181. friends with the Achaean league, sent an ambassador to them with an offer of a fleet of ten penteconters fully equipped; and the Achaeans, thinking the present worthy of their thanks, for the cost could not be much less than ten talents, gladly accepted the offer. Having come to this resolution, they selected Lycortas, Polybius, and Aratus, son of Aratus of Sicyon, to go on a mission to the king, partly to thank him for the arms which he had sent on a former occasion, and partly to receive the ships and make arrangements for bringing them across. Bk. 22, ch. 12. They appointed Lycortas, because, as Strategus at the time that Ptolemy renewed the alliance, he had worked energetically on the king’s side; and Polybius, though below the legal age for acting as ambassador,Perhaps thirty, which seems to have been the legal age for admission to political functions. See 29, 24. because, as his father has been ambassador at the renewal of the alliance with Ptolemy, and had brought the present of arms and of money to the Achaeans; and Aratus, similarly, on account of his former intercourse with the king. Ptolemy Epiphanes poisoned in B. C. 181. However, this mission never went after all, as Ptolemy died just at this time. . . .
