  It is well known that the integrable Hamiltonian systems defined by the
Adler-Kostant-Symes construction correspond via Hamiltonian reduction to
systems on cotangent bundles of Lie groups. Generalizing previous results on
Toda systems, here a Lagrangian version of the reduction procedure is exhibited
for those cases for which the underlying Lie algebra admits an invariant scalar
product. This is achieved by constructing a Lagrangian with gauge symmetry in
such a way that, by means of the Dirac algorithm, this Lagrangian reproduces
the Adler-Kostant-Symes system whose Hamiltonian is the quadratic form
associated with the scalar product on the Lie algebra.
