Xenophon of Ephesus, An Ephesian Tale 2.12.1 · 2.12.1
Manto writes to her father
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Ἐν δὲ τούτῳ τις ἧκεν ἀπὸ τῆς Συρίας οἰκέτης παρὰ τῆς Μαντοῦς γράμματα κομίζων τῷ πατρὶ Ἀψύρτῳ τάδε Ἔδωκάς με ἀνδρὶ ἐν ξένῃ· Ἄνθειαν δέ, ἣν μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων οἰκετῶν ἐδωρήσω μοι, πολλὰ διαπραξαμένην κακὰ εἰς ἀγρὸν οἰκεῖν ἐκελεύσαμεν. Ταύτην συνεχῶς ἐν τῷ χωρίῳ θεώμενος ὁ καλὸς Μοῖρις ἐρᾷ· μηκέτι δὲ φέρειν δυναμένη μετεπεμψάμην τὸν αἰπόλον καὶ τὴν κόρην πραθῆναι ἐκέλευσα ἐν πόλει τινὶ τῆς Συρίας.
In the meantime a servant came from Syria, bringing a letter from Manto to her father Apsyrtus. It said: "You gave me to a husband in a foreign land. As for Anthia, whom you gave me along with the other slaves, we ordered her to live in the country, since she had done much harm. The handsome Moeris, seeing her constantly on the farm, is in love with her. I could no longer bear it, so I sent for the goatherd and ordered the girl to be sold in some city of Syria."
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The setting
Book 2, chapter 12. The story returns to Apsyrtus' house near Tyre, where Habrocomes, now freed, manages the household.
A note on this passage
As far as Manto knows, Anthia is dead: she had ordered the goatherd to take the girl into the thickest part of the woods and kill her (2.11.3). The goatherd could not bring himself to do it and sold Anthia to merchants from Cilicia (2.11.7–9), so the sale Manto invents for her father is near the truth. In her love letter to Habrocomes, which she addressed "to the handsome Habrocomes," she also wrote that she loved him μηκέτι φέρειν δυναμένη, "no longer able to bear it" (2.5.1).
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