desires, and I gave the priest no peace, questioning him again and
again about the lady of whom he spoke; insomuch that I doubt not he
suspected the truth. But all my questioning was vain; for he said that
the lady would tell neither him nor his fellow-priests whence she came
nor whither she was going; but she had declared in parting that she
should come again to the Temple before long, if she lived. She was
of tall stature, with brown hair and gray eyes, of fair complexion
and somewhat pale, with a slight scar on the left cheek, and of a sad
expression, and she spoke Greek with the Attic accent; moreover she
informed the priests that she had sought in vain for her children for
many years. Straightway from his words I conceived the image of one who
could not have been guilty of any cruel or unnatural deed, and I became
assured in my mind that some foul play or irresistible constraint, but
not her own will, must have separated us from our mother. And a new
feeling possessed me that, if I could find her, I might still have some
one who would love me. But when I seemed to see her coming again to the
Temple, and myself meeting her and telling her all my story, and the
story of Chrestus, and shewing her my token, and falling on her neck
and embracing my mother, and how she also would embrace me as a son,
then it came into my mind, “And how could such a mother own such a son
as Onesimus is now?”
In that moment, thou, O Lord, didst show me unto myself that I might
hate myself; and on that same day I left the priest of Cybele and cast
off my old companions, and having found a lodging with one who prepared
skins for the covering of books, I determined to earn my living if
possible as a transcriber. For the space of three or four months I
lived after this manner, forswearing my former dissolute life and
letting no day pass but I visited the Temple; for the sun never rose
but I said to myself ‘this day perchance she may come;’ and I ruled
all my life by the thought of her, and the hope of her, if perchance
I might yet find one that would love me. But the Lord had ordained
otherwise. For on a certain day (about the beginning of the fifth
month after I had first come to Pergamus) taking my work to the shop
of a bookseller with whom I had dealings, I found there two or three
men of learning standing together, conversing of books and parchments
and the like; and taking up a parchment one said to a companion that
he had seen even such a book as this, so transcribed and adorned, in
the library of Philemon of Colossæ. Then a terror fell upon me lest I
should be discovered, and without so much as waiting to be paid for my
labor, I made shift to leave the shop, upon some slight pretext, and
returning to my lodging for a few minutes I went forth thence to the
city gates, and ceased not travelling till I came to Ephesus, where I
went on board a ship bound for the city of Corinth.
§ 3. HOW I CAME TO CORINTH AND SAW THE TOMB OF EUCHARIS.
At Corinth I found no man to employ me as transcriber. But because of
the number of rich people in that city (some living there but many more
resorting thither for pleasure) and many spending their whole lives in
continual revelling, there was a great demand for such buffoons, and
mimes, and inferior actors, as attend at great men’s feasts to make
them merry; and to this occupation I was now forced to stoop. And so
being cut off from all hope of finding my mother, I fell again into my
old ways of reprobate living. Besides the baseness of my mode of life,
I was weighed down by a perpetual slavish dread. Whithersoever I went,
or whatever company I frequented, I was never secure, fearing always
lest some one should take me by the throat and claim me as Philemon’s
slave, a thief, and a would-be murderer; and whenever I saw a slave’s
body hanging on the cross, with the crows fluttering round it, or a
gang of branded wretches with shaven heads dragged in manacles through
the streets, at such a time I would say, “Sooner or later this will
be thy fate, Onesimus.” This took all the heart and spirit out of my
resolve to lead a virtuous life. Sometimes I determined at all hazards
to go back to Pergamus; for it made my heart sick to think of her who
had been seeking me there many years, perhaps even at that instant
standing on those steps of the Temple which I had been wont day by day
to frequent in the hope of seeing her. But at first I durst not, and
after some days when I had at last determined and made ready to depart,
I remembered how I had told the priest of Asclepius that both Chrestus
and Onesimus were dead; which he belike had by this time conveyed to my
mother, so that she would now give over seeking in despair, and come
to Pergamus no more. The thought of her new sorrow was heavier than
I could bear, and thus that image of her which had been but of late
so precious and helpful, became unto me now so full of sadness that I
sought to flee from it in revellings and drunkenness.
The end of all was that the hand which seemed to have raised me for a
breathing-space out of the deep gulf of destruction now plunged me down
again; and I fell once more to a life not worse perhaps, but assuredly
not much better, than that which I had led with the priest of Cybele.
Yea, such a wretch was I now become that I began to be content with
wretchedness, preferring darkness and fearing any glimpse of light lest
it should make my darkness more visible; insomuch that once or twice at
this season, as I remember, I took off the little tokens from my neck,
the gifts of Eucharis and Chrestus, and thought to cast them away,
because when I felt them upon my breast they troubled me at nights,
suggesting visions of the past and hopes not possible. But, base and
vile though I was, my courage failed me, and I could not do it.
One day, after late revelling, when thoughts like these had been
disquieting my soul, I found myself wandering through the streets near
the quays where the ferry takes passengers across to Peiræus; and
scarce knowing what I did I stepped with the rest into the boat, and
presently I had disembarked and was walking up toward the city of
Athens, yet all the while cursing my folly in coming whither I should
not have come. For I feared lest I might be recognized, and still
more lest I should rouse up memories that were best forgotten. Yet on
I went, for all my self-reproaches, as if I were a lifeless engine
impelled by some power outside me, till I came to a little garden hard
by the wall, wherein was a tomb of Charidemus a brother of Eucharis,
who had died these many years; and entering in I read the words over
the grave, which oftentimes I had read with my beloved by my side:
Golden youth, read here thine end:
I sprang from dust, to dust descend.
Eucharis had always been wont to find fault with this inscription as
being too sad, and she would protest that, when she died, she would
have somewhat more hopeful inscribed upon her tomb. This saying of hers
coming to my memory reminded me of that which in my lethargy had all
this while escaped me, that her tomb also would in all likelihood be
in this same garden; and as I turned round my eye fell at once on a
new-made sepulchre and on it this inscription:
Twenty years of fleeting breath
Then Eucharis went down to death
Whom I fondly called my own,
Not knowing she was but a loan
Lent by Death, who from below
Sends short delights to make long woe.
Too short a loan, poor twenty years,
For such vast interest of tears
Which we must weep, who now remains
To feel a lonely father’s pains.
Dear dream, sweet bubble, painted air,
Break! leave poor Molon to despair.
When I read these words I could not but feel some touch of pity for the
poor old man mourning alone in his chamber where we three had been wont
to sit so happily together; and looking on the wreaths and garlands
that were on the sepulchre and perceiving that they were all very old
and faded, I remembered that Eucharis was born as on that very day, and
I marvelled that the old man had not come forth to do honor to the tomb
and to deck it with fresh flowers, and methought some strong cause must
have hindered him; for it was now nigh upon sun-down. So though I durst
not have looked him in the face, I arose and went into the city again,
even to the street where he lived, in case I might see him coming forth
from his door; and up and down I walked till sunset, my head muffled in
my cloak, and all that time I saw him not. Nor was I like to see him.
For when I inquired of one that came forth from a neighboring house
whether Molon yet lived in that street, he looked on me as if pitying
me for my ignorance and said that the old man had died but two days ago
and was to be buried on the morrow.
Now would I fain have persuaded myself that it was well with me,
because not a single friend remained to reproach me, nor any one whose
love or good opinion might deter me from leading a life according to my
own desires, or the drift of fortune: yet at night when I lay down in
Corinth, the thought of Eucharis would force its way into my soul, and
when I shut my eyes I could see nothing and think of nothing but the
inscription on her tomb; and at the last the memory of my beloved one
prevailed, and tears fell from eyes for the first time since I had read
her last farewell. But on the morrow all was forgotten. I went forth
to my task of buffoonery as usual; and the day and the night passed
according to custom, in jesting, and drinking, and revelling, and sin.
What shall I say to thee, O Lord, concerning these things? Shall I say,
Blessed be Thou, O Lord, who didst suffer Thy servant to sin much, that
he might be forgiven much, and that he might love much? Nay, but Thou
art a righteous Lord and hatest unrighteousness. Lord, this only can I
say, Thou knowest all, and yet Thou hast forgiven.
§ 4. HOW I SAW THE HOLY APOSTLE PAULUS BUT KNEW HIM NOT.
Though I had by this time no lack of employment, yet I began to be in
debt as well as in want. For by continued revelling and gaming and
drinking, I had spent all the money that I had brought with me from
Pergamus, I mean the money of Philemon. Therefore about this time (it
was the ninth year of the Emperor Nero) certain of my companions, who
were in the same case as myself, persuaded me to accompany them to
Rome, where they would obtain no less employment, they said, and better
pay. At any other time I should have been not a little moved, coming
thus for the first time to the chief city of the world; but such a
lethargy had fallen on me that I took little or no note of all the
greatness and splendor of the place, save only that I well remember
the day when I first saw the Emperor presiding at the games in the
Circus Maximus. For on that day seeing one that was a matricide, and
a murderer, and an abuser of nature, thus enthroned in the chief seat
of empire, and worshipped as God with the applause of such a concourse
as would have gone nigh to make up a great city, and beholding also
what vile sights were there exhibited—things detestable and not to be
mentioned, with which the deaths of thousands of gladiators cannot be
compared for horror—then it was borne in upon my mind that there need
be no more dispute as to whether Good or Evil reigned over the world;
for here before mine eyes was Evil visibly reigning, and called God by
all. Wherefore, though I went to no greater excesses than before at
Corinth, yet was I hardened and confirmed in evil, drowning my shame in
wine and striving to banish all distinction between evil and good.
Yet even at Rome there were seasons when, in my heart of hearts, I was
weary of my sinful and desolate condition, and longed for the touch of
a friend’s hand; and at times I yearned to be a fool and to believe in
something, cursing the wranglings and disputations of the philosophers
who had taken from me all faith in the gods, so that I could no longer
put trust in anything; yea, at such moments I would fain have been a
peasant in the poorest village of Asia (such a one as poor old Hermas
or lame Xanthias whom I remembered in my childhood), worshipping
Zeus, or Pan, or aught else, so that I might only be not myself. Life
wearied me, yet I feared death, yea, I feared even sleep; for the
darkness was full of terrors, and my couch brought me no rest, but only
horrible phantasms of dread abysses, and visions of falling down for
ever, and of hands stretched out to stay me and then drawn back, and
of sad faces veiled or turned away. The daylight which chased away the
terrors of sleep, brought ever back with it shame and remorse. Thus
all things, both by night and by day, seemed set in array against me.
But indeed (albeit I knew it not) my miseries were of the Lord; for by
these means, didst thou, O Judge that judgest rightly, even by these
righteous torments and just retributions, prepare me to be delivered
from unrighteousness and to be made free in the Lord Jesus.
After I had been in Rome a few weeks, I was admitted into a club
or collegium of actors; where I made acquaintance with the actor
Aliturius, a Jew by birth, one that was in great favor with Poppea who
had that same year been married to the Emperor. Now the lady Poppea,
like many others of rank and quality at that time, was given to the
observance of the Jewish law; at least so far as concerned Sabbaths and
abstinence from meats and the use of certain purifications; and she had
with her a certain Ishmael, who had been high priest among the Jews.
Hence it came to pass that, by help of Aliturius and through favor of
Poppea, I was admitted to perform and recite at several feasts and
drinking parties in the palace, and sometimes even in the presence of
the Emperor himself, but more especially before the officers of the
Pretorian guard.
One evening, as I came from a feast where I had been making mirth
for some of the officers, returning through that part of the palace
which looks towards the Circus Maximus, there passed by me a guard of
soldiers having a prisoner in chains, whom they led into an adjoining
chamber, and I understood from them that the man was to lie there for
that night, that he might be ready on the morrow; when the Emperor
himself proposed to hear his cause in the temple of Apollo, which was
near at hand. “And who,” said I, “is this prisoner whom the divine
Emperor thus deigns to honor?” The man, they said, was one of the
Christian superstition. Now at that time, being in favor with Poppea
and the Jew Aliturius, and it being my occupation to be a jester for
the officers and soldiers, I was wont to make the Christians matter
for jest and scoffing, not sparing sometimes (may the Lord forgive me)
to assail even the Crucified One in my jesting. So being inflamed with
wine, I thrust myself unbidden into the chamber, telling the guard
that we would examine the prisoner at once, “Wherefore,” said I, “be
ye _judices_ or jury, and I, for the nonce, will be the divine Emperor
himself.”
Having therefore made for myself a kind of tribunal, I sat down on it,
taking a centurion to be my assessor, and the rest of the soldiers,
joining in the jest, sat down upon the floor; and when I bade the
soldiers “produce the prisoner,” he sat up, but not so that I could
see his face clearly, the lamp being behind him. Then I accosted the
man in derision, saying that from his aspect I discerned him to be
Heraclitus the crying philosopher, and I asked him whether he also,
like Heraclitus, taught that “men are mortal gods, and gods immortal
men.” To this he replied, as if willing to enter into the jest, that
he was a teacher of joy and not of sorrow, but that indeed he taught
that God and men were at one. After this, mocking at his baldness, I
asked him whether he were Pythagoras risen from the dead, or whether he
could teach us to be something more than men and to be in harmony with
the Universe. He laughed gently at this, replying that, though indeed
he could teach these things, yet was he no philosopher but rather a
soldier; and saying this, he raised his head and looked at me very
intently as if he were weak of sight; and at this moment the light
of the lamp, just then falling on his face, perplexed me, because I
felt sure that I had seen this man before; but where or when I could
not tell. However, recovering myself, I asked him in what legion he
had served and under what Imperator, and he replied, still preserving
a calm temper and smiling, that he served in the Legio Victrix and
under the auspices of the Imperator Soter, or Salvator. Hereat the
soldiers applauded, and I perceived that I was being beaten on my own
ground. So thinking to catch the old man by some slip, or to drive him
into an inability to answer, I asked him what were his weapons. But
he replied that he used the shield of faith, and the breastplate of
righteousness, and the belt of truthfulness, and the sword of the word
of God; and, said he, I fight the good fight of righteousness against
unrighteousness, wherein the victory must needs be in the end upon my
side, as your own hearts also testify; for which cause is our legion
rightly called Victrix. He added some words which I cannot now recall,
about the nobleness of such a battle, and the glory of it, which moved
even the drowsy soldiers; insomuch that they said with one consent that
the man had reason on his side and that they wished him well. “Then,”
said I, making one last adventure to have the laugh on my side, “where
then is thy Imperator that he does not bear witness unto thee?” At once
he replied, “He will bear witness for me, and he is with me at this
instant;” and these words he uttered with such a force of confidence
and with a look so fixed and steady, gazing methought on some one whom
he discerned behind me, that I leaped up and looked over my shoulder,
trembling and quaking lest there were some phantom in the room. The
soldiers also were, for the moment, somewhat moved, howbeit less than
I was; and thinking perchance to shift the shame of their fear from
themselves, they called out that I was not worthy to sit on a tribunal,
nor to represent the divine Emperor. So, to put the best face I could
upon my discomfiture, I concluded briefly with a mock-oration, saying
that the prisoner appeared to be a valiant soldier, and that he seemed
worthy to be allowed the privilege of abstaining from swine’s flesh,
and of worshipping an ass’s head, if it so pleased him, and with that,
I proclaimed the meeting dissolved.
§ 5. HOW I LEARNED THAT PAULUS WAS THE PROPHET THAT I HAD SEEN IN MY
CHILDHOOD, THE SAME THAT HAD CURED LAME XANTHIAS.
As I was going forth from the chamber with the rest, he that was
guarding the prisoner stayed me, questioning me concerning the
Emperor’s health, and asking me whether it was likely that the Emperor
would hear his case in person to-morrow. I said that it was not
unlikely; for though he had not been in good health, yet now that he
was wedded to Poppea, she made him give heed to all Jewish matters.
“Yea but,” said the guard, “this fellow is no Jew, such as the other
Jews, but of a different faction, which they call seditious; and the
rest of his people hate him.” “I understand that,” said I, “but whether
the Jews love him or hate him, in either case Poppea will be for him
or against him; and of that he is like to have experience to-morrow.”
Then the soldier began to explain to me the nature of this sect; but
I interrupted him, saying that I knew everything concerning them,
“having learned their customs at Antioch” and whereas I was always wont
to preserve silence about my life in Asia and about everything and
every one that had to do therewith, now on the other hand, something
I know not what, made me add the words—“and at Colossæ;” and as soon
as I had said it I repented of it and hastened to go forth from the
chamber. But the prisoner rose up from his couch and, catching me by
the cloak, asked whether I had been lately at Colossæ and whether I
knew one Philemon, who was a citizen of that place. I said “no;” and
he sat down with a sigh, keeping his eyes fixed upon me; and then, as
I was going forth, the expression of his features came back to my mind
on a sudden and I remembered the hook-nosed prophet who had healed lame
Xanthias in years gone by at Lystra, and I could not forbear asking him
whether he had ever been in the region of Pamphylia; and he answered
“yes,” and when I mentioned Lystra, he said he knew that city and had
been there. Then I asked in what year, and he answered in the fourth
year, or thereabouts, of the Emperor Claudius. So perceiving that the
times agreed, I questioned him further whether he had healed a sick man
there, and to make sure, I said one sick of the palsy; but he replied
“No, but a lame man, that had been lame many years,” and with that he
leaned forward to me as if still desirous to answer and ask further
questions.
But at this point the soldier, he I mean to whom the prisoner was
chained (for the rest were gone forth) having now laid himself down
upon the pallet to sleep, smote the prisoner upon the face with the
palm of his hand, saying that it was bad enough that he should lose
his seat for the games in the Circus Maximus to-morrow, where the
people were even now gathering (and indeed we could hear the noise and
shouting of the multitude outside) and that he would not further be
cheated of his slumbers by a miserly Jew, who refused to give a single
denarius to the soldier that was at the pains of guarding him. Hereat
the prisoner began with a cheerful countenance to compose himself to
lie down by the side of his keeper, only saying that his friends had
been very willing to fee the keeper; but the guard having been that day
changed, and he himself being (as it chanced) without money, it was not
possible for him to give any fee at that time. But the soldier, nothing
moved, struck him twice, yet harder than before, with his fist, bidding
him hold his peace and saying, with a curse, that excuses were not
denarii.
I know not whether it was the patience and constancy of the prisoner
that moved me; or because his presence seemed to carry back my mind
to the days of my childhood, reminding me of the pleasant fields and
flocks round Lystra, and my brother Chrestus and my old nurse Trophime,
and the shepherd Hermas; but, be the cause what it may, certain it is
that I was drawn to the man as if bewitched or fascinated, and taking
out such money as I had (which was but very little) I gave it to the
soldier. At the same time I asked the prisoner whether he had made
any attempt to gain the intercession of Titus Annæus Seneca, a great
philosopher in those days and the former tutor of the Emperor. “Nay,
but the old bookworm has no power in these days with our Emperor,” said
the soldier taking my money, “and could no more rein him in now than a
butterfly could rein in the dragons of Hecate; besides, if he could,
think you that a man of quality, such as the Emperor’s tutor, would
regard such scum of the earth as these Christian wretches? However,
whatever he be is no business of mine, and money should have money’s
worth; so I give you five minutes with the prisoner; but, mark me, no
more.”