This post is a chapter of Neither Slave nor Free, a serial novel that tells a literary-fictional, historically-plausible backstory to the New Testament letter, Philemon. New chapter every Sunday. Listen to it on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
Risking crucifixion, Onesimus, an enslaved shepherd, flees his bitter half-brother and master, Philemon, only to find that freedom requires more than mere escape.
“. . . a masterful grasp of the cultural, political and spiritual context of the time . . . The heart of the novel beats for hope, and asks one essential question: what does it mean to truly be free?” —Claire Gibson, author of Beyond the Point: A Novel
“. . . one of the best historical novels I’ve ever read on a New Testament figure . . . Mead’s novel utilizes cutting edge scholarship as he weaves a beautiful and inspiring story of hope and faith.” —Demetrius K. Williams, Professor of Comparative Literature and Religious Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukie; Editor of Onesimus Our Brother: Reading Religion, Race and Slavery in Philemon
“Through characters that are vividly complex, defying any easy, moralizing categorization, Mead delivers a thrilling piece of historical fiction that sheds needed light on a tiny letter whose controversial impact has been, and remains, gargantuan.” —Tommy Givens, Associate Professor of New Testament Studies, Fuller Theological Seminary
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Epigraph
“All of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Galatians 3.27-28
54 CE, early December
The mountains south of Colossae,
in the Roman province of Asia
Pater was dead.
Ōnēsimus smiled. Tomorrow, he’d be free, he was sure of it. The next day, at the funeral, they’d read the will, and he’d no longer be a slave. Nor would his mother, Apphia, who had been Pater’s concubine. As he stood in the doorway of the crude summer shelter, little more than a heap of rocks topped with bedraggled thatch, Onesimus tried to imagine freedom: doing what he wanted, whenever he wanted, no one to tell him otherwise.
Last night’s dream still lingered, inchoate, its contents lurking just beyond his grasp. Something about his hateful half-brother? No, that wasn’t it. Not this time. His mind groped in the dark, but found only a feeling, the mere hint of a sightless vision. He thought again of his mother. More than once, she’d told him, “Dreams speak from the other world.” The unseen world of spirits, ghosts, and gods—of her one true God, she meant. Then she’d blather about some Egyptian—Joseph, if he wasn’t mistaken—at which point her words became noise, puffs of patronizing certainty. And what would she say of a dream hidden out of reach? Perhaps the other world should speak up, he thought, his mouth again curving into a wry smile.
He shivered in the frigid morning air. Gray light filtered through clouds with wispy downward tendrils like combed wool fibers, fresh from the fuller. A dusting of snow covered the ground—the first of the season—and swept up the scree slope across the valley to the south, toward the veiled peak of Mount Cadmus. Onesimus had prolonged their time in the mountains more than usual. He routinely delayed the return to the villa, to Colossae, breathing free air, avoiding the master’s eye. But they rarely stayed till snow. He pulled up his hood, brushed wavy hair from his ruddy face, picked up his staff, and slipped his free hand into the folds of his wool cloak.
He registered the dwindling wood pile and began across the sheepfold. The herd huddled on a bed of ferns, some shivering even in their eight-month coats, while the four dogs stayed tucked in snug circles, nestled around the flock, tracking Onesimus with a ripple of eyebrows. He hopped the willow fencing. In the preceding months, they’d picked over the forest close to the shelter, so he steered across the frosted meadow to a patch of trees still ripe with fuel.
He paused near the forest fringe. Six griffon vultures launched from high branches to the right, beat broad wings, and spiraled skyward, riding an updraft, silent, expansive. Barely breathing, he watched them rise, rapt, smoothing a brown lock behind his ear, then flipping it in front, then behind again. The birds drifted out of sight.
He closed his eyes. How would freedom feel? Like the siren smell of wine? Like roaring applause in a brimful theater? Like sprinting downhill, his cloak thrashing behind him? His stomach thrilled.
He opened his eyes, looked over his shoulder, and entered the forest, brushing between elastic branches of two juniper saplings. A broken stump stood before him, bleached gray with age, as tall as a man. Stubby shoulder-height branches on either side recalled a crouched boxer, and at face-level a scar in the decaying bark sneered at him. Still buoyant, Onesimus dropped his staff and began to box, ducking and jabbing the air in front of the snag.
At age six, he’d gone with Pater to the palaestra, the outdoor courtyard at the baths, where his father had begun teaching him to box. “Like a soldier,” Pater would say. They wore loincloths and leather gloves, and Pater oiled his fleshy barrel chest. He cuffed Onesimus with open hands, knocking him back and forth, smearing oil in his ears, which turned red with irritation and shame. He’d land a slap and mutter, “Anger, boy,” his breath stinking of posca, the sour wine of the Roman soldier. He insisted Onesimus come at him with fists, but it made no difference; Onesimus could never hit him. Until once, when he was fourteen, finally more angry than scared. Pater was plastered, his movements slow. Onesimus caught him on the jaw with a hook, rotating his slim frame into the punch like Pater had taught him, and then dropped his guard, astonished. He knew he’d hurt him, but Pater denied it and made an excuse to leave early. They never sparred again.
Onesimus stopped swinging, his breath quick, throat dry. He pulled a skin from under his cloak, uncorked it, took a generous swig, and grimaced. The dreaded lora—slave wine—the meager discharge of tired grapes twice-pressed already, their best juice cheering the hearts of freedmen and freeborns. The villa vintner had been tight in the spring when they left for the mountains. And through the summer, whenever they resupplied. Onesimus could often persuade the portly man to part with something better than lora, at least posca. In shearing season, a bag of raw wool delivered after midnight at the back door usually did the business. Onesimus had to avoid his mother’s judgmental gaze, but Pater was mostly too drunk to miss the wool or the wine—his father would count the lost drink toward his own endless thirst. The vintner’s pudgy wife fulled and spun the wool herself, quietly, in an empty storeroom, after bedtime, smelling of sour breastmilk, making yarn to weave better garments for her grubby brood or to sell at market for extra coins. Sometimes Onesimus got imported wine. Once even a skin of Falernian, nectar of the finest white grapes, aged ten years. But it seemed his luck had run out: the vintner’s eldest could now wear his father’s castoffs, and the younger ones traded up to the cloaks and tunics their father’s wine had won over the years, each garment a bitter reminder of good wine gone by. Onesimus took another draw of the lora and replaced the cork.
He returned to the fold with an armload of wood, splinters digging through his sleeves, scratching at his wrists, his staff balanced on top. The sheep remained huddled, but the dogs were up and alert, pacing the fence line. Their noses twitched with secret knowledge. Onesimus scanned the meadow, brown eyes narrowed, unsettled by the dogs’ behavior. Seeing nothing, he dumped the wood on the pile, retrieved his staff, and took a seat on one of the four rocks they’d placed around the fire ring.
Neos slouched on his rock. He’d tended the fire through the last watch. The boy’s cloak wrapped tight around his skinny frame, and fine features poked out from under his hood. At eighteen, he was only two years younger than Onesimus, but he seemed to him still a child. Timid. Unsure of himself. But undeniably handsome. Neos whittled a piece of pine into a cross; curved shavings sprang into the fire with each knife stroke. Handsome and foolish, thought Onesimus, eyeing the cross.
Neos looked up and cut himself, inhaling through his teeth.
Onesimus sighed, still feeling judgmental. “All right?”
“Not deep,” Neos mumbled, cut finger in his mouth. He shook out his hand and passed Onesimus a bowl of warm wine, again lora, spilling some in the process. “Sorry,” he said, barely audible.
“How was last watch?”
“Well . . . lots of howling.”
Neos had mumbled his reply, but Onesimus understood. “Close?” asked Onesimus. He wrinkled his nose.
“Not sure. Closer than two nights ago.”
“In the meadow?”
“Hard to . . . ” Neos failed to finish his sentence. “Maybe?”
“The dogs are bothered,” said Onesimus. Signs of wolves had become frequent in the last month. It was the same every year: as temperatures dropped, wild prey became scarce, which made the flock more tempting. “Have to be careful on the way down,” said Onesimus.
The twins, Chaleb and Gedeon, emerged from the shelter, their short, rawboned frames wrapped in ratty cloaks. The smell of pubescent armpits attacked Onesimus as the boys took seats either side of him. “Ever wash?” he said.
Chaleb snorted while Gedeon passed out tough barley bread and dried fish. Neos ladled more steaming wine from the tripod into bowls and passed them to the twins, this time without spilling.
Chaleb glanced at Onesimus. “Think you’ll be freed?”
A bold question, thought Onesimus. “Pater said so.” His mouth formed a self-satisfied grin. “You’ll be in charge.”
“You’ll go?” said Chaleb, eyebrows raised.
Onesimus nodded.
“What’ll you do?”
“Pater said he’d leave me a third of the flock.”
“A third!” said Neos, with rare clarity.
Onesimus nodded again, faking nonchalance. Pater owed him, he thought. After all, he was the man’s son, albeit by his concubine. “Move down valley, closer to Laodicea. Lease some pasture to start. Maybe buy later. Maybe even a slave or two.”
“You’ve thought about this,” said Chaleb. “What about Phīlēmon?”
“What about him?”
“You’ll owe him service,” said Chaleb. “Your patron.”
“Depends how Pater did it,” said Onesimus. “If he freed me directly, I’ll owe him nothing.”
“But if he didn’t—if he left Philemon to do it?” said Chaleb. “What about your reputation? Your duty. He’s your brother.”
Onesimus spat. “Brother,” he said, jaw tight. Philemon was heir of the estate, Pater’s first son, freeborn by a different woman. For as long as Onesimus could remember, Philemon had hated him. He was an adult when Onesimus was young, so the hatred was not that of siblings raised together, shown in harsh words and physical attacks, payback for the untold offenses of childhood; rather, it was mysterious, inscrutable, a fixed part of his world since before he could understand offense and its reasons, an opaque enmity of cold looks, short words, sharp tones, and studied neglect. Philemon did strike him sometimes, however, when Apphia wasn’t looking, always for some triviality. Spilled food. Wool shorn too close to the skin. Missing wine.
Given their enmity, Onesimus felt no filial duty toward his brother, and he cared more for his freedom than his reputation. But Chaleb might be right: if Pater had willed Philemon to free him, Onesimus would, strictly speaking, have continuing legal duties to serve his brother without pay—running errands, helping with shearing and lambing, supporting his reputation in Colossae—and to show an eager attitude in doing so. They would trade the master-slave relation for one of patron and client—a freer relation for Onesimus to be sure, but still one that bound him legally to his brother, their history of enslavement lurking like a shadow. But what if Onesimus avoided the prescribed work? Would Philemon take legal action? It seemed doubtful. Onesimus might work a day here and there, but he wouldn’t give Philemon his best, and he certainly wouldn’t be eager. Eagerness seemed a ridiculous requirement but, happily, almost impossible to disprove. If Pater had freed him while still alive, Onesimus would’ve served him more willingly; at least in his case there’d been moments of fatherly care between rounds of drunken abuse. With his brother, there’d been nothing. Onesimus guessed Philemon would reject even being called his brother, let alone offer the substance of it. If he served Philemon at all, his service would be paltry and begrudging.
Onesimus poured some wine on the ground from his bowl, a libation for Artemis, goddess of the hunt, and whispered a prayer of gratitude.
Chaleb and Gedeon exchanged a look, bowed, and closed their eyes, foreheads furrowed. Neos noticed the twins and did the same. Chaleb said, “Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.”
Onesimus took a bite of fish before their blessing was complete, and when they opened their eyes, he chewed loudly with his mouth open.
Chaleb looked at Neos. “When was the last time you saw Felicitas?”
Neos munched, his expression thoughtful. With each chew, the light curls of a teenage beard shifted up and down on his face. “Well,” he said, considering, “maybe . . . four months?”
“Won’t even remember you,” said Onesimus. He smirked.
“We talked about marriage last time.” Neos had taken the comment too seriously.
“Well,” said Onesimus, loosened by the wine, imitating Neos’s halting speech, “that was stupid.” He wished he could put the words back in his mouth.
Neos flinched, as if he’d been cut again, and looked at the ground, sullen.
“Sorry,” said Onesimus, gently grabbing his friend’s elbow.
Neos nodded, still looking at the ground.
In the awkward silence, Onesimus pushed the last bite of bread into his mouth and stood up. He walked across the sheepfold again, stopping at the fence line, searching the meadow. A marriage of slaves is stupid, he thought. He shimmied his right arm to loosen his leather jerkin, which felt too tight around his neck. If one of them gets sold? Or their children? He swigged from his wineskin.
He felt the familiar pressure of a lamb nuzzling his leg. It was Tritos, birthed in the spring by Loulou, his favorite ewe. Sheep over people any day, he thought, as he squatted down and looked the lamb in the face, scratching both sides of its neck. Loulou and Tritos would be in his third of the flock, he thought, satisfied.
Just then, a harmony of lupine howls drifted over the meadow, sending goosebumps across his body. Loulou bleated, Tritos darted back to the flock, and the dogs stood at the fence line, growling, hackles raised. Onesimus marched back to the fire pit. “We need to go.”
They doused the fire, collapsed the fencing, loaded the mules, and set off down the mountain, their breath ghostly in the chill air. Neos traveled in front of the flock, tracking the familiar route through the sparse alpine forest. The twins took the right and left flanks, each leading a loaded mule, while Onesimus brought up the rear, scanning the woods with a nervous eye. The four dogs patrolled the perimeter of the flock, fussing and nipping at stragglers. Their woolen charges ambled across the rough terrain, collar bells sounding flatly, bleating complaints like geriatrics made to walk on morning-stiff limbs.
After a few hours and no sign of wolves, they’d dropped two stadia into thicker forest. The tighter, taller canopy had kept the snow from the forest floor but also preserved a layer of frost against the warming sun. Each step made a composite crunch of needles, woody debris, and icy crystals beneath Onesimus’s leather boots. Pine filled his nose. He loved this section of woods, so open and majestic, as if he were passing between the columns of a great temple. Though he’d never seen the house of Artemis in Ephesus, he imagined it this way.
After midday, they reached a meadow with a pond, the halfway point of the journey and the place they usually took lunch. They’d dropped below the snow, so the grasses were verdant. Across the glade, the slope fell away, affording a sweeping view of the Lycus Valley: Colossae, Laodicea, even the white cliffs of Hierapolis in the distance. Chaleb and Gedeon made for the pond to fill empty skins. The dogs followed, their tongues splashing and scooping the water, then returned to their job, pacing the fringe of the glade. The sheep drank, grazed, and lounged.
The shepherds gathered near an outcrop at the pond and unpacked lunch. But before they could eat, Phylax, Onesimus’s dog and the largest of the four, began barking urgently near the upslope edge of the clearing. The other three dogs bolted toward the commotion in a blur of black and cream fur.
Onesimus jumped to his feet, hitched his belt, and grabbed his staff. “Gather the flock,” he said, and then dashed toward the dogs. As he drew near, he could see they were facing down a pack of six wolves. Why weren’t they fighting? He’d seen their dogs kill wolves before, even outnumbered. But arriving at the stand-off, he understood: the alpha wolf was enormous, almost looking Onesimus in the eye.
Images from his dream the night before flooded back: sprinting in the forest, towering trees flashing through his periphery, black pine and cedar so tall and broad he wonders if he’s in the colonnade of a massive temple, pillars wrapped in fluted marble bark. He’s pursuing five wolves ahead, but they’re quicker, the distance between him and the pack stretching like a morning yawn. His face, his arms, his guts strain with urgency. The farther ahead the pack extends, the more useless the thick staff in his hand becomes.
Just as he wonders why they run, why they fear him, there’s a high-pitched whistle in his left ear, almost a whine, and immediately a tortured yelp as one of the wolves falls ahead of him. Seconds later, he strides past the writhing animal, blood gushing from the entry and exit wounds of the black arrow lodged in its neck. Another whistle, this time in his right ear. Another fallen wolf. And now rhythmic sounds behind him, like water that ceases pouring and begins to patter from a roof to the ground below. The rhythm accelerates and a woman flashes past, a head taller than him, the muscular legs beneath her short tunic powering her forward, her feet barely touching the ground, and he knows it’s the virgin huntress. Two dogs whip past him on either side, keeping pace with the goddess, bolting forward in silent devotion. In full stride, the woman whips a black arrow from the quiver strapped to her back and, with a single motion, launches it into a third wolf. Then a fourth and fifth, and the spell breaks.
Onesimus gauged the weight of the alpha wolf standing before him at two hundred fifty librae, much heavier than Phylax. Heavier even than himself. Her eyes were different colors—one amber, one pale blue—and the white fur under her snout was stained brown with the blood of a recent kill. The other five wolves, all more ordinary in size, flanked the alpha and matched the aggressive barking of the dogs. The alpha stood still, silent, looking down on the dogs, disdainful, as if their frenzied aggression were juvenile posturing.
Still breathing hard from his sprint, adrenaline coursing, heart in his throat, Onesimus stepped in front of the dogs and swung the butt-end of his staff near the alpha’s head, trying to scare her off. Her pack shrank back, but she didn’t flinch. She contracted her muzzle, exposing finger-length fangs and brilliant pink gums, snarling, defiant.
Onesimus shuddered and felt nauseous. He swung the staff again, this time closer to the alpha’s face, and yelled with all the ferocity he could muster. Again, she didn’t flinch. She stared hard at him, eyes almost human, then turned and walked toward the woods at the edge of the clearing, her cowed companions hustling ahead in the same direction. As the wolves retreated, the dogs advanced, still a riot of barking, though leaving a buffer for the alpha. At the edge of the clearing, she turned and let go another guttural snarl—this one aimed at the dogs, who leapt back with a yelp. She locked eyes with Onesimus one last time and strolled into the woods.
He reached a trembling hand under the neckline of his jerkin and pulled out a charm, hung from a leather necklace. The silver charm depicted Artemis, her deadly bow and quiver slung over her shoulder, a hunting dog on either side. He whispered a prayer of thanks, kissed the charm, and tucked it back against his chest.
I am captivated, Aaron. This is absolutely stunning writing and I can’t wait to see how it unfolds.