Magic wheel, draw that man to my house. Delphis lost this fringe from his cloak; now I shred it and throw it into the savage fire. Ah, cruel Eros, why have you fastened on me like a leech from the marsh and drunk all the dark blood out of my body?

Something the beloved has worn is an old ingredient of love magic. Cholmeley's addenda cite the nurse in Euripides' Hippolytus, who says a love charm needs a token taken from the one desired, from his clothes or some other sign of him (lines 513–515). Simaetha shreds the fringe of Delphis' cloak and throws it on the fire. Then she turns on Eros: he has fastened on her like a leech from the marsh and drunk her dark blood. LSJ's entry for βδέλλα runs from the leeches in a crocodile's mouth in Herodotus (2.68) to Nicander's poem on poisons and their cures, where a swallowed leech is one of the dangers (Alexipharmaca 500). Love, in this line, is a creature that drains the body.