n 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 there were
taken six thousand horses, with a countless number of baggage-beasts,
and fifteen thousand men, all whom he led back past the camp of the
enemy. I wonder at Sallustius saying that this was the first time that
the Romans saw the camel;[356] for he must have supposed that the
soldiers of Scipio, who some time before had defeated Antiochus, and
those who had also fought with Archelaus at Orchomenus and Chaeronea,
were unacquainted with the camel. Now Mithridates had determined to
fly as soon as he could; but, with the view of contriving something
which should draw Lucullus in the other d