See, lady Moon, where my love came from. I was already halfway along the road, by Lycon's place, when I saw Delphis and Eudamippus walking together. Their beards were more golden than goldflower, and their chests shone far brighter than you, Moon, for they had just come from their fine exercise at the gymnasium.

Halfway along the road she sees Delphis walking with his friend Eudamippus. Cholmeley notes that love at first sight at a religious procession was a stock scene of the New Comedy and the later Greek romances, and that the novelist Chariton modeled a scene on this one: his hero walks home from the gymnasium "gleaming like a star." The young men have come straight from exercise, oiled and shining. Their beards are more golden than ἑλίχρυσος, a yellow everlasting flower, and Simaetha tells the Moon to her face that they outshone her.