See, lady Moon, where my love came from. And the heartless one looked at me, fixed his eyes on the ground, sat down on the couch, and as he sat he said: "Simaetha, you beat me by as much as I beat graceful Philinus in the race the other day, when you asked me to your house before I could come of my own accord."

Delphis has a speech ready. He looks at the ground, sits on her bed and pays her a compliment shaped like a race: she beat him to it, inviting him before he could come on his own, as he beat Philinus running the other day. Cholmeley reads the lowered eyes as put-on shyness. Simaetha calls him ὁ ἄστοργος, "the one without love," a word built on στοργή, the love that binds a family. Philinus may have been a real runner: Cholmeley suggested Philinus of Cos, who won the footrace at Olympia in 264 BC, though his addenda record doubts.