Plutarch, Lucullus
Bernadotte Perrin, Ed.

10. 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. [2] 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; [3] then a south wind burst forth with incredible fury, shattered the other engines in a short space of time, and threw down with a great shock the wooden tower a hundred cubits high. It is related, too, that the goddess Athena appeared to many of the inhabitants of Ilium in their sleep, dripping with sweat, showing part of her peplus torn away, and saying that she was just come from assisting the Cyzicenes. And the people of Ilium used to show a stele which had on it certain decrees and inscriptions relating to this matter.