heard
nothing of him. Yet the army of Lucullus was visible and in sight of
the city; but the citizens were deceived by the soldiers of
Mithridates, who pointed to the Romans in their entrenchments on the
higher ground, and said, "Do you see them? That is the army of the
Armenians and Medes, which Tigranes has sent to support Mithridates."

The Kyzikeni were alarmed to see such a host of enemies around them,
and they had no hopes that they could be released, even if Lucullus
should come. However, Demonax, who was sent to them by Archelaus, was
the first to inform them of Lucullus being there. While they were
distrusting his intelligence, and thinking that he had merely invented
this story to comfort them in their difficulties, there came a youth,
who had been captured by the enemy and made his escape. On their
asking him where he supposed Lucullus to be, he laughed outright, for
he thought they were making sport of him; but, seeing that they were
in earnest, he pointed with his hand to the Roman camp, and the
citizens again took courage. Now the lake Daskylitis[351] is navigable
for boats of a considerable size, and Lucullus, drawing up the largest
of them, and conveying it on a waggon to the sea-coast, put into it as
many soldiers as it would hold. The soldiers crossed over by night
unobserved, and got into the city.

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: the