Lucullus

With these words, he led his army against Mithridates, having thirty thousand foot-soldiers, and twenty-five hundred horsemen. But when he had come within sight of the enemy and seen with amazement their multitude, he desired to refrain from battle and draw out the time. But Marius, whom Sertorius had sent to Mithridates from Spain with an army, came out to meet him, and challenged him to combat, and so he put his forces in array to fight the issue out.

But presently, as they were on the point of joining battle, with no apparent change of weather, but all on a sudden, the sky burst asunder, and a huge, flame-like body was seen to fall between the two armies. In shape, it was most like a wine-jar, and in colour, like molten silver. Both sides were astonished at the sight, and separated.

This marvel, as they say, occurred in Phrygia, at a place called Otryae. But Lucullus, feeling sure that no human provision or wealth could maintain, for any length of time, and in the face of an enemy, so many thousands of men as Mithridates had, ordered one of the captives to be brought to him, and asked him first, how many men shared his mess, and then, how much food he had left in his tent.

When the man had answered these questions, he ordered him to be removed, and questioned a second and a third in like manner. Then, comparing the amount of food provided with the number of men to be fed, he concluded that within three or four days the enemy’s provisions would fail them. All the more, therefore, did he trust to time, and collected into his camp a great abundance of provisions, that so, himself in the midst of plenty, he might watch for his enemy’s distress.

But in the meantime, Mithridates planned a blow at Cyzicus, which had suffered terribly in the battle near Chalcedon, having lost three thousand men and ten ships. Accordingly, wishing to evade the notice of Lucullus, he set out immediately after the evening meal, taking advantage of a dark and rainy night, and succeeded in planting his forces over against the city, on the slopes of the mountain range of Adrasteia, by day-break.