"'Delphians, you may perhaps imagine that I have called together this meeting, and am now addressing it solely on account of my own great calamities; but that is not entirely the case. I suffer indeed what is worse than death. I am left deserted, afflicted by the gods, my house desolate, and deprived of that sweet conversation which I preferred to all the pleasures in the world; yet hope, and the self-conceit common to us, still sustains me, and promises me that I shall again recover my daughter. But I am moved with indignation at the affront which has been offered to the city, which I hope to see punished even before my own wrongs are redressed, unless the Thessalian striplings have taken away from us our free spirit, and just regard for our country and its gods; for what can be more shameful than that a few youths, dancers forsooth, and followers of an embassy, should trample under their feet the laws and authority of the first city in Greece, and should ravish from: the temple of Apollo its chiefest ornament, Chariclea, alas! the delight of my eyes; How obstinate and implacable towards me has been the anger of the gods! The life of my own daughter, as you know, was extinguished with the light of her nuptial torches. Grief for her death brought her mother soon to the grave, and drove me from my country; but, when I found Chariclea, I felt myself consoled; she became my life, the hope of succession in my family, my sweet anchor, I may say, my only comfort. Of all these this sudden storm has bereft me, and that at the most unlucky time possible, as if I were to be the scorn and sport of fate, just when preparations were making for her marriage, and you were all informed of it.'