Xenophon of Ephesus, An Ephesian Tale, interlinear Greek to English · Flora, wall painting from Stabiae (1st century AD)
beta · Books 1–2: from the festival at Ephesus to the robbers of Cilicia

An Ephesian Tale

Xenophon of Ephesus · Ἐφεσιακά

The most beautiful boy in Ephesus laughs at Eros and says no one ever falls in love against his will. Eros arms himself with love drugs and lets him see Anthia at the festival of Artemis. Within a few pages the two are married, warned by an oracle, and carried off by pirates.

Read it now

Books 1 and 2 in Xenophon's Greek, word by word, with transliteration, an in-context gloss, flowing English with the supplied words in brackets, two dictionaries quoted (Middle Liddell and LSJ) and notes. The rest of the book is still in the press. Citation ID: urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0641.tlg001.

❦ Read An Ephesian Tale in Greek
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A taste: every book reads word beneath word
τὰ
tà
the
μέγιστα
mégista
greatest
τῶν
tôn
of the
ἀγαθῶν
agathôn
goods
ἡμῖν
hēmîn
for us
“The greatest of goods come to be for us through madness.” A line of the finished Phaedrus

A taste of the format. Open the reader above to read all of An Ephesian Tale word by word.

About this book

Why read it

The romance of Anthia and Habrocomes in the plain Greek Xenophon wrote, one section at a time: the Greek line, its pronunciation, the reading in bold, the literal sense beneath it, the flowing English, and a dictionary on every word.

The lore

Apart from the title in the manuscript, the only record of the author is an entry in the Suda, a Byzantine encyclopedia of the tenth century: Xenophon of Ephesus, who wrote the Ephesiaca, a love story about Habrocomes and Anthia in ten books. The text we have runs to five and survives in a single medieval manuscript, so it may be a shortened form of a longer novel.

What’s juicy

The story starts with a boy who says no one ever falls in love unwilling. Eros takes it as a declaration of war, and the god's answer is the whole plot: an oracle in riddling verse speaks of the sea, chains, a tomb that is a bridal chamber, fire and the Nile, and each one comes true.

How it might change you

In English the romance can read like a summary. Word by word you see how simple the sentences are, and how often one word carries the story: φάρμακον, the drug that can heal, kill or put to sleep.

Core vocabulary

The words that carry the book. Learn these and most of the text opens up; each links, in the reader, to its full entry. Counts are how often the word appears.

  1. Ἁβροκόμης Habrocomes, the hero108×
  2. εἰμί to be99×
  3. Ἄνθεια Anthia, the heroine85×
  4. λέγω to say65×
  5. πᾶς all51×
  6. πολύς much49×
  7. ὁράω sees40×
  8. γίγνομαι to become38×
  9. οὐ not38×
  10. ἔχω to have37×
  11. θεός god36×
  12. ἄγω lead, bring30×
  13. καλός beautiful26×
  14. ἐράω love, desire passionately24×
  15. δοκέω to seem22×
  16. Κόρυμβος Corymbus, a pirate22×
  17. Ἄψυρτος Apsyrtus, the pirate chief22×
  18. παρθένος maiden21×
  19. λαμβάνω take, seize, catch21×
  20. ἔρχομαι to come20×
  21. δεσπότης master20×
  22. φημί to say20×
  23. ὅστις whoever20×
  24. Μαντώ Manto, daughter of Apsyrtus20×
  25. μέγας great19×
  26. κόρη girl19×
  27. οἰκέτης household slave, servant19×
  28. ἔρως love, desire18×
  29. δύναμαι to be able17×
  30. γυνή woman17×
  31. πείθω to persuade17×
  32. ψυχή soul16×
  33. ἀκούω to hear16×
  34. σός your16×
  35. ποιέω to make16×
  36. αἰπόλος goatherd, one who tends goats16×
  37. ἀνήρ man15×
  38. γῆ earth15×
  39. Ἔρως Eros, the god of love15×
  40. ἐθέλω to be willing15×
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