Xenophon of Ephesus, An Ephesian Tale 1.5.9 · 1.5.9
The fathers send to the oracle
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Ἔκειντο μὲν δὴ ἑκάτεροι νοσοῦντες, πάνυ ἐπισφαλῶς διακείμενοι, ὅσον οὐδέπω τεθνήξεσθαι προσδοκώμενοι, κατειπεῖν αὑτῶν τὴν συμφορὰν μὴ δυνάμενοι. Τέλος ⟨δὲ⟩ πέμπουσιν οἱ πατέρες ἑκατέρων εἰς θεοῦ μαντευσόμενοι τήν τε αἰτίαν τῆς νόσου καὶ τὴν ἀπαλλαγήν.
So both of them lay sick, in a very dangerous state, expected to die at any moment, and they could not reveal their misfortune. At last the fathers of both sent to the god's shrine, to ask the oracle the cause of the disease and its cure.
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The setting
Book 1, chapter 5. Neither family knows what is wrong with their child.
A note on this passage
The fathers put a doctor's questions to a god: the αἰτία, "cause," of the νόσος, "disease," and its ἀπαλλαγή, "riddance." The oracle answers in verse with the same pair turned around, "the end and the beginning of the disease," and says that one disease holds both lovers (1.6.2). εἰς θεοῦ, "to the god's," leaves out the word for his house, the way English says "to the doctor's."
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