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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Story Recap
Philemon fails to find a luxury buyer for his wool in Hierapolis. On the journey back to Colossae, Philemon blames Onesimus for the failure and strikes him. As the traveling party nears Colossae, they encounter two men on the road. The men appear threatening but leave the travelers unharmed.
When the traveling party reached the north gate, they turned and entered the city. Philemon and the other two slaves began up the hill toward the domus, but Onesimus broke from the group, taking the low road that hugged the interior of the wall; it seemed safer than the roads outside the citadel. Tertius and Primus waved as he departed, but Philemon ignored him. Onesimus followed the road around to the south gate and passed back out of the city.
Fifty steps ahead, beside the road, he spotted a broken body hanging from a wooden cross, high in the air. He shivered and covered his nose with a handful of cloak, trying to block the smell of rotting flesh, and wiped his sweaty free hand on his tunic. His heart galloped. The skin of the naked victim was lurid white in the moonlight, and his stomach was bloated. Square iron spikes pinned his forearms and feet to the wood. His bloodied legs bent unnaturally, jagged broken bones protruding mid-shin. A raven perched on the shoulder of the body, burrowing into a lifeless eye socket with its beak, freeing the last spherical prize from the corpse’s lolling head.
Crucifixion was not merely capital punishment. The Romans had simpler ways to kill criminals: beheading, strangling, casting from a cliff. They reserved crucifixion for strange bedfellows: would-be kings and wayward slaves. Rome viewed both as threats to its power, the first from above, directly jeopardizing the rule of the emperor, and the second from below, undermining the economic system that propped up his rule. In Roman eyes, both crimes called not for mere execution, but for public torture, humiliation, debasement, the complete stripping of status, prolonged death as a warning to anyone with similar ambitions. Once before, outside Laodicea, Onesimus had seen victims still hanging from wooden frames, but never in Colossae—a provincial town with no Roman garrison, distant from the empire’s capital, neglected for its suspect historical allegiances.
As Onesimus drew closer, his stomach convulsed. He pressed the fabric of his cloak more tightly over his nose and squinted in the low light at the tablet nailed to the post, which reported the crime: “Fugitivus.” One of the only Latin words Onesimus knew: the label for a runaway slave. Now at the foot of the cross, he looked up at the body and recognized the man, despite his disfigurement. Septimanus. One of Marius’s country slaves. A fieldworker. Met him once at a festival. Onesimus began to tremble. He hadn’t heard of any recent runaways—he’d been up the mountain—but he had heard that Marius fed his field slaves poorly. “Expendable,” he’d called them. Hunger could make anyone desperate.
His entire body was now shaking. He felt he might vomit. He hurried on toward the trunk road, heart thundering, passed the intersection, and started down the cart-track to the villa, looking over his shoulder every few moments. Clouds enveloped the moon, and the sky began to weep. By the time he reached the gatehouse, the clouds had burst, and coin-sized droplets pelted the earth. He dashed for the sheepfold.
He barely registered Chaleb’s greeting from the watchman’s chair and stepped inside the quarters, breathing hard, dripping wet. Gedeon and Neos looked up from their spot by the hearth. Their faces reflected orange from the glowing fire, and the room smelled of the sweet juniper Neos was whittling. Onesimus stripped off his damp cloak and hung it on a hook. He climbed into bed, still clothed, and lay on his side, facing the wall, comforted by the sour, oily smell of the wool blanket. His face felt tender where Philemon had struck him.
“You okay?” said Neos.
Onesimus grunted.
“What happened?”
“Crucifixion outside the southern gate. One of Marius’s field slaves.” Onesimus examined the contours of the mud-brick wall in the half-light. “And Philemon hit me.” A fresh wave of melancholy washed over him. His blanket felt heavier than normal, an immobilizing weight that constrained him, hemmed him in. Outside, the rain hammered, assailing the shutters and spilling off the roof like a beaded curtain. Onesimus closed his eyes.
He woke with a start, surprised he’d drifted off. What time was it? He rolled over and surveyed the dark room. A few embers still glowed on the hearth. The rain had stopped, and Onesimus could hear Gedeon and Chaleb inhaling and exhaling the rhythmic breath of sleep. He guessed it must be near the end of third watch. Neos would be in soon to wake him for his shift on the final watch.
He rubbed his sore jaw and thought for a moment. Then, with a flash of purpose, he sat up and swung his boot-clad feet off the side of bed, onto the floor. He crouched and reached under the bed, sliding out a leather bag. He paused over it for another moment, his heart speeding. Could he do this? He stuffed in personal effects: two undergarments, a summer cloak, sandals, a second wineskin, a knife in its sheath. His stomach growled. He slipped over to the wash basin and eased open the overhead cabinet. Empty. Damn it. The twins hadn’t restocked the bread, and there was no way into the kitchen at this hour. He crept back to his bed and felt for the coin purse on his bedside shelf. Also empty. He stuffed the purse into the bag anyway, nausea brewing in his stomach. Just then, he heard Neos outside the door, so he shoved the bag under his bed and quickly lay down again, facing the wall.
Neos walked across the room, put a hand on his shoulder, shook gently, and whispered, “Onesimus!”
Onesimus grunted and rolled over, pretending to wake, heart-thunder in his ears.
“Your watch,” Neos whispered, then made his way to his own bed.
Onesimus put on his now-dry cloak, drawing the hood over his head, picked up his staff, and stepped outside into the moonlight. The rain had stopped, but the sheep were still packed together under cover, white clumps with legs tucked in. The four dogs were spread throughout the flock. They looked up as Onesimus emerged. At the sight of him, three set their heads back down, but Phylax continued to stare.
Onesimus relieved himself, then checked the crude water clock—a covered terra cotta vessel with hour markings on the inside wall and a small hole at the base from which water dribbled through the night. Chaleb had set it dribbling at sunset; it was now three hours before dawn. Onesimus settled into the watchman’s chair, the blanket still warm with Neos’s body heat. Phylax picked his way through the sheep to Onesimus. The dog licked his hand once, then stood staring, nose quivering, tail wagging, studying him. “What?” said Onesimus, exasperated. Phylax stared a few seconds more and then returned to his post among the sheep, but he continued to watch Onesimus.
After an hour, when he figured Neos was sound asleep, Onesimus went back inside, gathered his packed bag, adding to it the woolen blanket from his bed, and slunk back outside to the watchman’s chair. Phylax showed suspicion once more, rousing himself to smell the bag and performing another long stare. “Stop it!” hissed Onesimus. “You’ll be alright.” The dog lay down on his feet.
He should be on the trunk road before the sun comes up, he thought. If he left it later, someone might see him, someone he knew, and his bag would look suspect. The junction with the trunk road was a half-hour away, and he’d have to cut through the woods to avoid the gatehouse, so he’d need to leave at least an hour before dawn. He wouldn’t go much earlier, since that would leave the sheep unattended for too long. They’d have to be exposed for some period; couldn’t help that. But better to make it as short as possible, the least he could do for his comrades and the animals. He checked the water clock: two hours before dawn. He’d leave in an hour. The finality of the plan made his heart race anew.
Time passed at once too slowly and too quickly; his freedom seemed endlessly deferred, yet the plan hung over him like a threat of death. What would he eat? He had no bread, no money. And this was hardly the season to glean fruit or grain from the land. Where would he go? East to Syria? So foreign. He’d heard Syrian traders speaking in the Colossian market, but their tongue was unintelligible to him. West, then? Greek would suffice in that direction, but it was also Philemon’s business territory. At the coast, he could look for a ship to take him further, but he’d still need to pass through. And how would he pay? He thought of the two men they’d met on the road the evening before, their curved swords, the reported killings. Worst of all would be capture. Unscrupulous captors might have his face tattooed with the mark of the fugitivus—“FVG”—and sold for the mines or the galleys, a protracted death sentence. Men of duty would return him to Philemon, who might also have him tattooed and sold. Or worse. His mind fixed on the mangled body he’d seen hanging from the cross, and his heart throbbed in his throat.
He crossed the yard to the water clock, his hands trembling as he lifted the lid. He could see by moonlight his hour had just passed. Now was the time. He lurched back to the watchman’s chair to retrieve his bag, but he found himself compelled to sit again, stomach seething, heart clattering. A small part of him searched for courage to carry out the plan, but his body stayed rooted in the chair, blocked by the wall of terror in his mind.
Now time rushed headlong. In a blink, a half-hour passed, the horizon glowed brown, and the twins emerged from the sleeping quarters, on their way to the villa for breakfast. They looked at Onesimus. “What’s with the bag?” said Chaleb.
Onesimus shook his head.
The twins studied him. “We’ll bring food,” said Chaleb. They passed through the gate of the sheepfold, and Onesimus felt his body release, like a fist unclenching. He slipped inside and unpacked the bag before Neos awoke.
I had several chapters to catch up on, and I saved them for after a 12 hour day of editing my own book yesterday. So worth the wait!