Lucullus

However, in the first place, Demonax was sent in to them by Archelaüs, and told them that Lucullus was arrived. They disbelieved him, and thought he had invented his story merely to mitigate their anxieties, but then a boy came to them, who had escaped from his captivity with the enemy. On their asking him where he thought Lucullus was, he laughed at them, supposing them to be jesting. But when he saw that they were in earnest, he pointed out the Roman camp to them, and their courage was revived.

Again, Lucullus drew out on shore the largest of the sizable craft which plied the lake Dascylitis, carried it across to the sea on a waggon, and embarked upon it as many soldiers as it would hold, who crossed by night unobserved, and got safely into the city.

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;