The paper aims to show that the "Ephesian Story" of Xenophon of Ephesus is a rather sophisticated novel, in which intertextuality plays an important role. The novelist is particularly interested in Homeric imitation: the Homeric model inspires the general structure of the story and is a crucial key also for the interpretation of single episodes. The second part of the paper discusses two passages of the novel in which the manuscript text is corrupt, showing that the intertextual analysis can be very useful also for textual restoration.