Xenophon of Ephesus, An Ephesian Tale 1.9.1 · 1.9.1
Too shy to speak
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Τοῖς δὲ ἑκατέροις πάθος συνέβη ταὐτόν, καὶ οὔτε προσειπεῖν ἔτι ἀλλήλους ἠδύναντο οὔτε ἀντιβλέψαι τοῖς ὀφθαλμοῖς, ἔκειντο δὲ ὑφʼ ἡδονῆς παρειμένοι, αἰδούμενοι, φοβούμενοι, πνευστιῶντες· ἐπάλλετο δὲ αὐτοῖς τὰ σώματα καὶ ἐκραδαίνοντο αὐτοῖς αἱ ψυχαί.
The same feeling came over both of them. They could no longer speak to each other, or look each other in the eyes; they lay faint with delight, shy, afraid, breathing hard. Their bodies trembled and their souls quivered.
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The setting
Book 1, chapter 9. On the wedding night the two are left alone in the bridal chamber, and the doors are shut.
A note on this passage
Alone at last, they are struck by the shyness that kept them silent in the temple, when each was ashamed, for fear, to tell the other the truth; αἰδούμενοι is the word in both places (1.5.3). These are the old symptoms of love poetry: in one of Sappho's most famous poems the speaker loses her voice and trembles all over (fragment 31). Here the trembling reaches the soul, and ἐκραδαίνοντο is the verb Homer uses for a spear left quivering in the ground (Iliad 13.504).
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