This was the beginning of worse troubles, for while Apsyrtos was away on business, his daughter Manto fell in love with Habrocomes and made advances to him through a slave and a letter. When he refused to satisfy her desires, for vengeance she accused him to her father of having tried to rape her. Apsyrtos had Habrocomes flogged, tortured and cast into prison. Anthia contriving a secret visit to her husband told him she had been given as a slave to Manto and must accompany her to Syria, where Manto’s newly acquired husband Moeris lived. The two slaves of Habrocomes and Anthia, Leucon and Rhode, were sold into a distant land. Manto to disgrace Anthia as much as possible married her to one of her humblest slaves, Lampon, a goatherd. But Lampon pitying Anthia on hearing from her own lips her story respected her and never made her his actual wife. In Tyre Apsyrtos happened to find the love-letter which his daughter had written to Habrocomes. Learning from it his unjust treatment of Habrocomes he released him from prison, gave him his freedom, and made him steward of his house.
Meanwhile in Syria Anthia’s fatal beauty had inflamed Manto’s husband Moeris with a mad passion for her. He confided this to the goatherd Lampon begging for his aid. Lampon to save Anthia went secretly and told Manto her husband’s designs. Manto in jealous fury ordered Lampon to kill the woman. In sorrow he told Anthia all and together they planned that instead of killing her he should sell her as a slave in some remote district. He managed to hide this transaction and saved her life by selling her to some Cilician merchants. But their ship was wrecked in a storm. A few (among them Anthia) came to land on a raft and after wandering all night in the woods were captured by the brigand Hippothoos.
Manto meanwhile wrote to her father a letter made up of truth and lies, saying that the slave Anthia had been so troublesome she had given the girl to a goatherd and afterwards when Moeris became enamored of the woman, she had sold both the goatherd and his wife in Syria. Habrocomes at once started out in search for Anthia and finding Lampon and learning the true story from him, he set forth for Cilicia.
There, however, Anthia had been in great danger. Hippothoos and his brigands were about to sacrifice her to Ares, but she was rescued by a high police official of the district, Perilaos, who captured all the brigands except Hippothoos. He took her to Tarsus and of course soon fell in love with her. He offered her honorable marriage, wealth, children and she fearing his violent passion forced herself to consent but asked for a month’s delay.