Xenophon of Ephesus, An Ephesian Tale 2.13.5 · 2.13.5
Perilaus pities Anthia
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Ἔλαβε δὲ τὴν Ἄνθειαν Περίλαος καὶ πυθόμενος τὴν μέλλουσαν συμφορὰν ἠλέησεν· εἶχε δὲ ἄρα μεγάλης ἀρχὴν συμφορᾶς ὁ ἔλεος Ἀνθείας· ἄγει δὲ αὐτὴν καὶ τοὺς συλληφθέντας τῶν λῃστῶν εἰς Ταρσὸν τῆς Κιλικίας.
Perilaus took Anthia, and when he learned of the misfortune that had awaited her, he pitied her. But his pity for Anthia, as it turned out, held the beginning of a great misfortune. He took her and the captured robbers to Tarsus in Cilicia.
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The setting
Book 2, chapter 13. The robber band is broken up, and Anthia is in the hands of Perilaus and his men.
A note on this passage
The narrator steps in with a warning. Perilaus pities Anthia for the συμφορά, "misfortune," she has just escaped, and his pity holds the beginning of another, so the repeated word joins the two. Homer's narrator marks a turn of fate the same way, with the same particle ἄρα: when Patroclus comes out of the hut at Achilles' call, "this was the beginning of evil for him" (κακοῦ δ' ἄρα οἱ πέλεν ἀρχή, Iliad 11.604). The pity leads to the marriage Perilaus will press on her, and in Book 3 that marriage drives her to ask a doctor for a deadly drug (3.5).
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