X. It appears that the deity, also, admiring the bravery of the Kyzikeni, encouraged them by other manifest signs, and especially by this:  the festival called Persephassia[352] was at hand, and as they had not a black cow to sacrifice, they made one of dough, and placed it at the altar.  The cow which was intended to be the victim, and was fattening for the goddess, was pasturing, like the other animals of the Kyzikeni, on the opposite mainland; but on that day, leaving the rest of the herd by itself, it swam over the channel to the city and presented itself to be sacrificed.  The goddess also appeared in a dream to Aristagoras, the town-clerk,[353] and said:  “For my part, I am come, and I bring the Libyan fifer against the Pontic trumpeter.  Bid the citizens, then, be of good cheer.”  The Kyzikeni were wondering at these words, when at daybreak the sea began to be disturbed by an unsteady, changing wind that descended upon it, and the engines of the king, which were placed near the walls—­admirable contrivances of Nikonides the Thessalian—­by their creaking and rattling showed what was going to happen:  then a south-west wind, bursting forth with incredible fury, broke to pieces the other engines in a very short time, and shook and threw down the wooden tower, which was a hundred cubits high.  It is told that Athena appeared to many of the people in Ilium in their sleep, streaming with copious sweat, showing part of her peplus rent, and saying that she had just returned from helping the Kyzikeni.  And the people of Ilium used to show a stele[354] which contained certain decrees and an inscription about these matters.

XI.  Mithridates, so long as he was deceived by his generals and kept in ignorance of the famine in his army, was annoyed at the Kyzikeni holding out against the blockade.  But his ambition and his haughtiness quickly oozed away when he had discovered the straits in which his army was held, and that they were eating one another; for Lucullus was not carrying on the war in a theatrical way, nor with mere show; but, as the proverb says, was kicking against the belly, and contriving every means how he should cut off the food.  Accordingly, while Lucullus was engaged in besieging a certain garrisoned post, Mithridates, seizing the opportunity, sent off into Bithynia nearly all his cavalry, with the beasts of burden, and all his superfluous infantry.  Lucullus hearing of this, returned to his camp during the night, and early in the following morning, it being winter time, getting ready ten cohorts and the cavalry, he followed the troops of Mithridates, though it was snowing, and his soldiers suffered so much that many of them gave in by reason of the cold, and were left behind:  however, with the rest he came up with the enemy at the river Rhyndakus,[355] and gave them such a defeat that the women came from the town of Apollonia and carried off the baggage and stripped the dead.  Many fell in the battle, as might be supposed, but