Lucullus

It would seem also that Heaven, in admiration of their bravery, emboldened the men of Cyzicus by many manifest signs, and especially by the following. The festival of Persephone was at hand, and the people, in lack of a black heifer for the sacrifice, fashioned one of dough, and brought it to the altar. Now the sacred heifer reared for the goddess was pasturing, like the other herds of the Cyzicenes, on the opposite side of the strait, but on that day she left her herd, swam over alone to the city, and presented herself for the sacrifice.

And again, the goddess appeared in a dream to Aristagoras, the town-clerk, saying: Lo, here am I, and I bring the Libyan fifer against the Pontic trumpeter. Bid the citizens therefore be of good cheer. While the Cyzicenes were lost in wonder at the saying, at daybreak the sea began to toss under a boisterous wind, and the siege-engines of the king along the walls, the wonderful works of Niconides the Thessalian, by their creaking and cracking showed clearly what was about to happen;

then a south wind burst forth with incredible fury, shattered the other engines in a short space of time, and threw down with a great shock the wooden tower a hundred cubits high. It is related, too, that the goddess Athena appeared to many of the inhabitants of Ilium in their sleep, dripping with sweat, showing part of her peplus torn away, and saying that she was just come from assisting the Cyzicenes. And the people of Ilium used to show a stele which had on it certain decrees and inscriptions relating to this matter.

Mithridates, as long as his generals deceived him into ignorance of the famine in his army, was vexed that the Cyzicenes should successfully withstand his siege. But his eager ambition quickly ebbed away when he perceived the straits in which his soldiers were involved, and their actual cannibalism. For Lucullus was not carrying on the war in any theatrical way, nor for mere display, but, as the saying is, was kicking in the belly, and devising every means for cutting off food.

Accordingly, while Lucullus was laying siege to some outpost or other, Mithridates eagerly took advantage of the opportunity, and sent away into Bithynia almost all his horsemen, together with the beasts of burden, and those of his foot-soldiers who were disabled. On learning of this, Lucullus returned to his camp while it was still night, and early in the morning, in spite of a storm, took ten cohorts of infantry and his calvary, aid started in pursuit, although snow was falling and his hardships were extreme. Many of his soldiers were overcome with the cold and had to be left behind, but with the rest he overtook the enemy at the river Rhyndacus

and inflicted such a defeat upon them that the very women came forth from Apollonia and carried off their baggage and stripped their slain. Many fell in the battle, as it is natural to suppose. Six thousand horses and fifteen thousand men were captured, besides an untold number of beasts of burden. All these followed in the train of Lucullus as he marched back past the camp of the enemy.