_THE ADVENTURES OF A RUNAWAY_
Ἕκαστος δὲ πειράζεται ὑπὸ τῆς ἰδίας ἐπιθυμίας ἐξελκόμενος καὶ
δελεαζόμενος.--S. JAC. _Ep._ i. 14.
Φρύγα οἰκέτην ἔχω πονηρόν.--ALCIPHR. _Ep._ iii. 38.
The real history of Onesimus was this. He had been born at Thyatira;
his parents had once been in a respectable position, but his father
had been unfortunate, and when the boy became an orphan he had sunk
so low in the world that, to save him from the pangs of hunger,
the creditors sold him as a slave to the purple-factory of which
Lydia--who afterwards became St. Paul’s convert at Philippi--was
part-owner. There he had learnt a great deal about the purple-trade
and the best way of folding and keeping purple robes. But he was wild
and careless and fond of pleasure, and the head workman, not finding
him profitable or easy to manage, had again offered him for sale. He
was a quick, good-looking boy, and Philemon, a gentleman of Colossæ,
touched with his forlorn look as he stood on the slave-platform
(_catasta_) with his feet chalked and a description (_titulus_) round
his neck, had felt compassion for him and had bought him. Not long
after this, Philemon, with his wife Apphia, his son Archippus, and
several slaves of their household, had been converted by St. Paul.
The Apostle had not, indeed, visited the strange Phrygian city, where
the Lycus flows under its natural bridges of gleaming travertine;
but Philemon and his party had gone down to witness the great Asian
games at Ephesus, and to view the treasures of the famous Temple of
Artemis, which was one of the wonders of the world. There they had
heard Paul preach in the hall of the rhetorician Tyrannus, and, being
of sweet and serious disposition, had been profoundly impressed by
the message of the gospel. The grace of God had taken possession of
their hearts. They exulted in the purity, the hope, and the gladness
of Christianity, and under the fostering care of Epaphras, to whose
charge St. Paul had entrusted the churches of the Lycian valley, they
had finally been led to the full acceptance of the gospel, and had
been baptised in the waters of their native river.
Onesimus had not been baptised with them, though he had learnt
something of Christianity as a young catechumen. He had lived in
daily contact with these good people from early boyhood, and they
had treated him with a kindness and consideration which was in marked
contrast to the brutal manner of most Pagans towards the human beings
whom they regarded as chattels of which they were the indefeasible
owners. But Colossæ was a sleepy and decaying city. It offered
none of the pleasures and excitements which Onesimus had tasted at
Thyatira and Ephesus. He longed to escape from the narrow valley of
the dull town; to hear in the streets of Ephesus the shrill wail of
the priests of Cybele; to gaze at the superb Artemisian processions;
to sit palpitating with enthusiasm as he watched the chariots dash
past him in wild career in the circus, or the gorgeous spectacles
of the amphitheatre. Above all he sighed and yearned for Rome, for
he had often heard of its glory, its magnificence, its unchecked
indulgencies. He was only a slave--only one of those Phrygian slaves,
who were the least esteemed; but he had been free born. The passions
of the Asiatic Greek were strong in him. Other slaves had made their
way--why should not he? He was strong, clever, good-looking--was he
not certain to secure some fortune in the world?
The ‘tempting opportunity’ met the ‘susceptible disposition.’
Philemon was engaged in the wool-dyeing which formed the most
prosperous industry of Colossæ, and on a certain day after the great
fair of Laodicea considerable sums were paid to him. He had never
had any reason to distrust Onesimus, and the youth knew where the
money was kept. One day, when Philemon had been summoned by business
to Hierapolis and was likely to be absent for a week, Onesimus
abstracted some of the gold coins--enough, he thought, to take him
safely to Rome if necessary--and absconded to Ephesus. There, for a
few days, he enjoyed himself in visiting the marvels and amusements
of the city. But a fair youth, in servile dress, alone, in a crowded
town, could hardly escape falling among companions of the lowest
type. Fain would they have plunged him into vice and dissipation;
but though the runaway was not always truthful, and had fallen into
dishonesty, he was far from being depraved. One who had breathed in
a pure Christian household the dewy dawn of the Christian faith, and
had watched its purple glow transfiguring the commonest elements of
life, could hardly sink to the depths of Satan in the great weltering
sea of heathen wickedness. Fallen as he was, he never wholly lost his
self-respect, and when he had satisfied his first wild impulse he
longed to return and plead for forgiveness. After all, how infinitely
more happy had he been in sleepy Colossæ than in tumultuous Ephesus!
But for a slave to abscond from a kind master, and in absconding
to steal his master’s gold, was not only a heinous but a capital
offence. He did not know but what Philemon, good and kind as he was,
might still deem it right to uphold the laws of the State, and to
hand him over to the magistrates. And then he shuddered to think of
what awaited him: what blows, what brandings, what wearing of the
furca, or thrusting into the stocks, or being made to work in the
mines or the galleys, or among the chained wretches of some public
slave-prison. The soft nature of the Eastern shrank from such horrors,
and almost more from the intolerable sense of shame which would
overwhelm him when he stood for the first time a convict-fugitive
in his master’s house.
His ill-got money was soon ill-gone. A little of it was lost in
gambling; some he had to squander on worthless companions, who tried
to insinuate themselves into his favour, or to terrify him with their
suspicions; the rest was stolen one night in the low lodging which
he had been obliged to seek. Penniless, and sick at heart, he hurried
down to the great quay of the city, and offered to work his passage
to Italy in a galley. Landed in Italy he had begged his way to
Rome, and in Rome he had sunk to the wretchedness in which we first
saw him. No career seemed open to him but a career of vice; no
possibility offered of earning his daily bread but by criminal
courses. He sank back horrified from the rascality which he had
witnessed on every side, among those who, being past feeling, and
having their consciences seared as with a hot iron, wrought all
uncleanness with greediness. He grew more and more emaciated, more
and more wretched, sleeping under arches or porticoes, and depending
for his scant supply of polenta on the chance of a farthing flung to
him now and then in scornful alms. The accident which threw him in
the path of Pudens came only just in time to save him from ruin and
despair.
Nereus, the freedman of Pudens, was not unwilling to get for nothing
an active youth who might turn out to be a useful slave; and in that
household he once more found kindness and happiness. It is true that
Pudens was not yet an open Christian, but several of his slaves were,
as Onesimus soon discovered; and he had learnt by experience that,
among Christian men and women, he was safe from a thousand miseries
and a thousand temptations. The busy thronging, rushing life of Rome
delighted his quick intelligence, and all the more from the contrast
it presented to the silent streets of Colossæ, and the narrow valley
of its strange white stream.
He had several adventures, and such principles of righteousness
as were left to him were severely tried. Some of the young slaves
whom he encountered took him to the theatres, and in the pantomimic
displays and Atellan fables a cynical shamelessness reigned supreme.
To witness the acting of a Paris or an Aliturus was to witness
consummate human skill and beauty pandering to the lowest instincts
of humanity. Yet Onesimus could not keep away from these scenes,
though Stachys and Nereus and Junia and others of the Christian
slaves of Pudens did their best, when the chance offered, to save
him from the vortex of such perilous dissipation.
Still more brutalising, still more destructive of every element
of pureness and kindness were the gladiatorial games. Of these he
had no experience. In the provinces they were comparatively rare,
and Philemon had forbidden his slaves ever to be present in the
amphitheatre when they were exhibited. Onesimus, who had nothing
cruel in his nature, had so far preserved a sort of respect for the
wishes of Philemon, that he determined not to witness a gladiatorial
show. When the great day came, all the slaves were talking of the
prowess of Gallina and Syrus, two famous gladiators, and of the
magnificent number of lions and tigers which were to be exhibited.
He could not help being interested in a topic which seemed so
absorbing, but he still meant to keep away. Some of his comrades,
however, thought that scruples which might suit a Cicero and a Seneca
were quite out of place in a Phrygian foot-boy, and seized him in
the street and said, ‘We are going to take you to the amphitheatre
by force.’
‘It is of no use to take me,’ said Onesimus, repeating a sentiment
which he had heard from Philemon. ‘I am not going to see fine
fellows--fine Dacians and Britons--hack one another to pieces to
please a multitude of whom the majority deserve life much less than
the gladiators themselves.’
‘_Di magni, salaputium disertum!_’ exclaimed Lygdus, one of the
gay and festal company who belonged to Cæsar’s household. ‘I heard
Epictetus say something of the kind, and we all know that the poor
little fellow is only a small echo of Musonius. But you, Onesimus,
cannot pretend to be a philosopher, and instead of talking seditious
nonsense against the majesty of the Roman people, go you shall.’
‘Well then, you will have to drag me there by force,’ said Onesimus.
‘Never mind; go you shall,’ said Lygdus; and, seizing him by the neck
and arms, they hurried him along with them into the top seats set
apart for slaves and the proletariat.
When once there, Onesimus had not the wisdom to behave as young
Alypius did three centuries later, and to close his eyes. On the
contrary, he caught fire, almost from the first moment, with the wild
excitement, and returned home paganised in every fibre of his being
by the horrid voluptuous maddening scene which he had witnessed--in
which he had taken part. All that was sweet and pure and tender in
the lessons which he had learnt in the house of Philemon seemed to
have been swept away for the time in that crimson tide of blood, in
that demoniac spectacle of strong men sacrificed as on a Moloch-altar
for the amusement of the idle populace. The more splendid the agility
of the nets-man, the more brawny the muscles of the Samnite, the
more dazzling the sweep of the mirmillo’s steel, the more vivid was
the excitement of watching the glazing eye and ebbing life. It was
thrilling to see the supreme moments and most unfathomed mysteries
of existence turned into the spectacle of a holiday; and even to help
in deciding by the movement of a thumb whether some blue-eyed German
from the Teutobergian forests should live or die. What wonder was it
that waves of emotion swept over the assembled multitude as the gusts
of a summer tempest sweep over the waving corn? What wonder that
the hearts of thousands, as though they were the heart of one man,
throbbed together in fierce sympathy, and became like a wild Æolian
harp, of which the strings were beaten into murmurs or shrieks or
sobs by some intermittent hurricane? In the concentrated passion
of those hours, when every pulse leapt and tingled with excitement,
the youth seemed to live through years in moments; his whole being
palpitated with a delicious horror, which annihilated all the
ordinary interests of life. Here, for the mere dissipation of time,
the most consummate tragedies were enacted as part of a scenic
display. The spasms of anguish and the heroism of endurance were
but the passing incidents of a gymnastic show.
When Onesimus returned to his cell that night he was a changed
being. For a long time he could not sleep, and when he did sleep
the tumult of the arena still rolled through his troubled dreams.
His fellow-slaves, long familiar with such games, were amused to hear
him start up from his pallet with shouts of _Habet! Occide! Verbera!_
and all the wild cries of the amphitheatre, and from these bloodshot
dreams he would awake panting as from a nightmare, while the chant of
the gladiators, _Ave, Cæsar! Morituri te salutamus_, still woke its
solemn echoes in his ears.
All life looked stale and dull to the Phrygian slave when the glow
of an Italian morning entering his cell aroused him to the duties of
the day. Slaves, even in a humble home like that of Pudens, were so
numerous as to make those duties inconceivably light. For the greater
part of the day his time was his own, for all he had to do was to
wait on Pudens when he went out, carrying anything which his master
might require. But henceforth his thoughts were day-dreams, and,
when not engaged in work, he found nothing to do but to join in
the gossip of his fellow-slaves. Their talk turned usually on three
subjects--their masters, and all the low society slanders of the
city; the delights of the taverns; the merits of rival gladiators and
charioteers, whose names were on every lip. Such conversation led of
course to incessant betting, and many a slave lost the whole amount
of his savings again and again by backing the merits of a Pacideianus
or a Spicillus; or by running up too long scores at the cook-shop
(_popina_) to which his fellow-slaves resorted; or by trying to win
the affections of some favourite female flute-player from Syria or
Spain.
Gambling, too, was the incessant diversion of these idle hordes. The
_familia_ of Pudens only consisted of the modest number of thirty,
but the slave population of Rome was of colossal magnitude, and there
was a terrible free-masonry among the members of this wretched and
corrupted class. The companions of Onesimus were not chiefly to
be found in the household to which he belonged, but among the lewd
idlers whom he picked up as acquaintances in every street. With these
he played at dice, and sauntered about, and jested, and drank, and
squabbled, and betted, until he was on the high road towards being
as low a specimen of the slave-world as any of them all--a beautiful
human soul caught in the snare of the devil, lured by the glittering
bait of vice, to be dragged forth soon to die lacerated and gasping
upon the shore.
Hitherto a very little had sufficed him, but now he began to need
money--money for gambling, money for the taverns, money to spend in
the same sins and follies in which the slaves about him spent their
days. He could indeed have gained it, had he sunk so low, in a
thousand nefarious ways; and, gifted as he was with a quick and
supple intelligence, as well as with no small share of the beauty
of his race, he might have run away once more, or have secured his
purchase into many a pagan household, where he might have become the
pampered favourite of some luxurious master. Such, in such a city as
Rome, would have been the certain fate of any youth like him, had it
not been for the truths which he had heard from Epaphras in the house
of Philemon. When he was most willing to forget those holy lessons
they still hung about him and gave him checks. The grace of God still
lived as a faint spark, not wholly quenched, under the whitening
embers of his life. He could not forget that what were now his
pleasures had once been pains, and sometimes amid the stifling
atmosphere of a dissipation which rapidly tended to become
pleasureless, his soul seemed to ‘gasp among the shallows,’ sore
athirst for purer air.
But he resisted these retarding influences, and by fiercer draughts
of excitement strove to dispel the pleadings of the still small
voice.
It was not long before he felt hard pressed, for he had gambled away
the little he had earned.
He had stolen before--he would steal again.
The slaves of Pudens were mostly of a simpler and more faithful class
than those of the more luxurious houses. There was no need for Pudens
to take great precautions about the safety of his money. Most of it
was safe in the hands of his banker (_mensarius_), but sums which
to a slave would seem considerable were locked up in a chest under
the charge of Nereus. Nereus, as we have already mentioned, was a
Christian, and Onesimus, until he had begun to degenerate, had felt
warmly drawn towards his daughter Junia. He thought, too, that the
simple maiden was not wholly indifferent to him. But Nereus had
watched his career, and as it became too probable that the Phrygian
would sink into worthlessness, he had taken care that Onesimus and
his daughter should scarcely ever meet.
But when, as in every Roman house, a multitude live in a confined
space, the whole ways of the house become known to all, and Onesimus
knew the place where Nereus kept the ready money of his master. He
watched his opportunity when all but a few members of the household
were absent to witness a festival, from which he had purposely
absented himself on a plea of sickness. The only persons left at
home were Nereus and others who, being Christians, avoided giving
the smallest sanction to pagan ceremonies. The house was still as
the grave in the noontide, when the youth glided into the cell of
the sleeping Nereus, and deftly abstracted from his tunic the key
which he wanted. Armed with this, he slipped into the _tablinum_,
or private room, of Pudens--whom he knew to be on duty at the
Palace--and had already opened the casket in which he kept his
money, when he was startled by a low voice and a gliding footstep.
He had not been unobserved. Nereus was too faithful, and too much
aware of the dishonesty of the unhappy class to which he belonged,
to leave his master’s interests unprotected. He had directed his
daughter always to be watchful at the hour when he knew that a theft
was most feasible. Junia, from the apartments of the female slaves,
on the other side of the house, had heard some one moving stealthily
along the passage. Hidden behind a statue, she had observed a slave
stealing into her father’s cell, had followed lightly, and with a
pang of shame had seen the youth of whom she had thought as a lover
make his way noiselessly to the room of his master.
She followed him to the entrance; she saw him open the casket; and
she grew almost sick with terror when she thought of the frightful
punishment--possibly even crucifixion itself--which might follow the
crime he was on the eve of committing. She would fain have stopped
him, but did not dare to enter the chamber; and, meanwhile, for some
reason the youth was lingering.
He was lingering because there rang in his ear a voiceless memory
of words which Epaphras had quoted as a message of Paul of Tarsus.
The still voice said to him: ‘Let him that stole steal no more; but
rather let him labour, working with his hands.’
He was trying to suppress the mutiny of ‘the blushing shamefast
spirit’ within him, as he thought of the games and the dice-box and
the Subura, when he was thrilled through and through by a terrified
and scarcely audible whisper of his name--
‘Onesimus!’
He turned round, and with nervous haste relocking the casket, hurried
into the passage. There, with head bowed over her hands, he saw the
figure of a young girl. For one instant she raised her face as he
came out, and he exclaimed--‘Junia!’
She raised her hand with a warning gesture, put her finger to her
lips, and vanished. She fled towards the garden behind the farthest
precincts of the house, and he overtook her in a walk sheltered from
view by a trellis covered with the leaves of a spreading vine.
‘Junia,’ he said, flinging himself on his knees, ‘will you betray me?’
The girl stood pale and trembling. ‘Onesimus,’ she said, ‘I conceal
nothing from my father.’
‘From your father? Oh, Junia, he would drag me before Pudens. Would
you see me beaten, perhaps to death, with the leaded thongs? Would
you hear me shriek under the horrible _scutica_? Could you bear to
see the crows tearing my flesh as I hung on the cross?’
‘Pudens is just and kind,’ she said, faintly, ‘he never inflicts upon
his slaves such horrors as these.’
‘No,’ answered Onesimus, bitterly; ‘it would suffice to send me,
chained, to work in some sunless pit to the music of clanking fetters.
It would suffice to brand three letters on my forehead, and turn me
into the world to starve as a spectacle of shame.’
‘Onesimus,’ she said, ‘would God I could--’ She stopped, confused
and terrified, for she did not know that Onesimus had ever heard the
truths of Christianity.
‘Junia,’ he exclaimed, ‘you are a Christian; so am I’--and he marked
on the gravel the monogram of Christ.
‘Alas!’ she answered, ‘a Christian you cannot be. It seems that you
have heard of Jesus; but Christians cannot steal, and cannot live as
you have been living. Christians are innocent.’
‘Then you will betray me? Ah! but if you do, you are in my power.
Christianity is a foreign superstition. The City Prætor--’
‘Base,’ she answered, ‘and baser than I thought. Know you not’--and
a light came into her eye, and a glow over all her face--‘that a
Christian can suffer? that even a Christian slave-girl does not fear
at all to die?’
He thought that she had never looked so beautiful--so like one of
the angels of whom he had heard in the gatherings at Colossæ. But
the sight of the gladiators hacking each other to pieces had inured
him to cruelty and blood--had filled him with fierce egotism, and
indifference to human life. A horrible thought suddenly leapt upon
him as with a tiger’s leap. Why not get rid of the sole witness of
his crime?
‘Then you will betray me to chains, to branding, to the scourge, to
the cross?’ he asked, fiercely.
Weeping, hiding her face in her hands, she said: ‘What duty tells me,
I must do. I must tell my father.’
In an instant the devil had Onesimus in his grip. He thrust his right
hand into his bosom, where he had purposely concealed a dagger.
‘Then die!’ he exclaimed, seizing her with his left hand, while the
steel gleamed in the sun.
The girl moved not; but his own shriek startled the air, as he felt
a hand come down on his shoulder with the grasp of a vice. The dagger
was wrenched out of his hand; he was whirled round, the blow of a
powerful fist stretched him on the path, and a foot which seemed as
if it would crush out his life was placed upon his breast.
‘Oh, father, spare him!’ said Junia.
Nereus still kept his foot on the prostrate youth, still held the
dagger in his hand; his eyes still flashed, his whole frame was
dilated with righteous indignation. He had misunderstood the meaning
of the scene.
‘Explain!’ he said. ‘Junia! You here alone with Onesimus in the
vine-walk, at the lonely noon! How did he inveigle you here? Did he
dare to insult you?’
The girl had risen; and while Onesimus lay on the ground, stunned
with the violence of his fall, she told her father all that had
happened.
Nereus spurned the youth with his foot.
‘And I once thought,’ he said, ‘that he was a secret Christian! I
once thought that some day he might be worthy to be the husband of
my Junia! A thief! a would-be murderer! This comes of harbouring a
strange Phrygian in an honest household.’
‘Father, forgive him!’ said Junia. ‘Are not we forgiven?’
‘The wrong to me--the threat against the life of the child I love
--yes, that might be forgiven,’ said Nereus; ‘forgiven if repented
of. But how can I do otherwise than tell Pudens? How can I keep this
youth a member of the household?’
And again, moved by strong passion, he spurned him with his foot.
‘Is there one house in Rome, father,’ she said, ‘in which there are
not thieves? in which there are not men--aye, and women too--who
steal, and would murder if they could? Is he worse than thousands
whom yet we do not see chained in the prisons or rotting on the
crosses? And have we not all sinned? and did not Jesus say, “Forgive
one another your trespasses”?’
A half-suppressed groan from Onesimus stopped the conversation.
‘I know not what to do,’ said Nereus. ‘Go back, my child, to your
cell and to your distaff. I will see you soon. And you,’ he said,
‘thrice-wretched boy, come with me.’
He dragged Onesimus from the ground, and was in such a transport of
wrath that he could not refrain from shaking him by the shoulders
with the roughest and most contemptuous violence, before he thrust
him into the house, and into the cell which had been assigned to
him. Then, calling two of his fellow-slaves, Stachys and Amplias,
Christians like himself, whom he could implicitly trust, he bade them
bind Onesimus hand and foot, and leave him, not unwatched, till he
should have time to consider his case.