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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.
IX. In the meantime Mithridates resolved to attack the Kyzikeni, who had received a blow in the battle at Chalkedon, for they had lost three thousand men and ten ships.
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.
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 which contained certain decrees and an inscription about these matters.
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.
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 was at hand, and as they had not a black cow to sacrifice, they made one of dough, and placed it at the altar.
Mithridates had hemmed in the Kyzikeni with ten camps on the land side, and towards the sea with his ships, by blocking up the narrow channel which separates the city from the mainland, and thus he was besieging them on both sides.
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: then 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.
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