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
The slaves of Philemon’s household gather at the Lycus River for the Christian conversion ritual of baptism. Onesimus puzzles over the baptismal formula: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” As a devotee of the goddess Artemis, Onesimus tries to avoid the ritual but is baptized against his will. He receives a necklace with a wooden cross.
The meeting after the baptism vexed Onesimus as much as he’d expected. He stood in the back, listening to Philemon relate a story about Christians in Ephesus who’d been imprisoned, including a man named Paul, someone Philemon seemed to idolize. Archippus prayed a convoluted prayer for the prisoners—sometimes in Greek, sometimes in Aramaic, the native tongue of the Jewish people—then delivered an equally ponderous teaching about a man named Abraham, his circumcision, and his worship of angels, all of which was a bizarre test of patience.
For the next four days, the weather was miserable. Stifling low clouds sent steady rain, softening the sheepfold to a muddy mess. Round cakes of dung and dirt hung from the sheep’s underbellies, wobbling as they walked. The shepherds dragged, their clothing constantly damp, gloomy in their work. Even the unquenchable spirit of the dogs sagged from the wet.
Three nights in a row, as rain pounded, Onesimus had the same dream. He stood in the middle of the river wearing a cream-colored tunic while snow fell around him. Epaphras stood beside him and said, “In the name of the Archangel Gabriel!” and then submerged him in the icy waters, holding him under. Just as the urge to breathe became unbearable, he’d wake in a cold sweat.
On the fourth day, a messenger from the domus arrived and told Onesimus he’d be traveling to Hierapolis with Philemon the next day. He was to meet his master at dawn, at the north gate. That night, the dream repeated. Only this time, Philemon held him under.
The next morning, they met as planned. The rain had let up, but the roads were still sodden, and the clouds oppressed from above, shading the valley in dull grays and browns. Philemon stood waiting with Tertius and another stout slave, Primus. Tertius carried a club and a sizable leather bag stuffed with wool, while Primus carried a smaller sack and a broadsword in its scabbard, swinging from a baldric. Security detail, thought Onesimus. He greeted Philemon with a reserved nod.
“You’re late,” said Philemon, obviously irritated.
It couldn’t have been much past dawn, though the cloud cover made it hard to tell. “Forgive me,” said Onesimus, his tone ambiguous.
Philemon stared at him. “Let’s not waste any more time,” he said and struck out north along the colonnade, toward the river. The three slaves followed, Onesimus a step behind his master, the other two bringing up the rear. Their journey was sixteen miles. Many times, Onesimus had trekked to Laodicea—twelve miles along the trunk road—but he’d never been north to Hierapolis.
Not far outside Colossae, the road climbed a hill yielding a view of the Lycus below, twisting and turning its way downstream toward the Maeander, skirting shallow gravel bars on one side, eroding cut-banks on the other. Onesimus surveyed the valley stretching west for signs of Colossae’s sister cities, but a mass of rising fog melded with the low clouds and obscured them, along with the ridges to either side, like the gods had fixed a misty lid over the world, trapping them in the dreary landscape. Their boots splashed and squished along the waterlogged track, and the breeze carried melancholy birdsong. Onesimus drifted into a trance.
Five miles along, Philemon looked over his shoulder. “Why are we going to Hierapolis?”
The words jarred Onesimus to attention. They sounded more like a statement than a question. He glanced at Tertius, carrying the large bundle. He wasn’t sure Philemon was talking to him, but since neither of the other slaves answered, he said, “To sell wool?”
“Very good,” said Philemon, sarcastic. “But we can sell wool in Colossae. Why Hierapolis?”
Last spring, Philemon had paid a visit to the shepherds at the villa—the first time Onesimus had ever seen him set foot in the sheepfold. It was the last day of shearing, and Onesimus sat on a stool, itself perched on the wooden shearing floor. The twins held a testy ewe while Onesimus clipped her shaggy belly, carefully separating the winter wool from the spring rise while avoiding capricious hoofs. A shadow fell across their work as Philemon filled the door frame, blocking the sunlight. He entered the shed, stooping to avoid the lintel, then stood up straight and looked with displeasure at the untidy tools and equipment. “Stop your work,” he said. The gruff order was moot; his arrival had alarmed the ewe, so they’d already stopped. The twins loosened their grip on the animal, and Onesimus set down his shears, sitting up straight to relieve his aching back. “You must take the wool to a different fuller this year,” he said. “To Stachys, the new man from Hierapolis. Stall next to the agora.” Onesimus nodded. Philemon made no eye contact as he spoke, and he left without another word, his face hard and thankless.
The next day, Pater had come to the sheepfold—a common occurrence as he’d had an active interest in his flock. Onesimus had boiled lupines in a cauldron, added wine dregs, and was using a straw brush to slather the mixture onto the newly sheared sheep, a balm for shearing wounds. Pater fussed over the animals’ bedding, the mud in the sheepfold, and the consistency of the balm. Finally, he said, “Did Philemon visit yesterday?”
“Yes, sir.” Onesimus tried not to recoil from his master’s breath, which smelled of rotten fruit.
Pater nodded. “What did he want?”
Onesimus felt as though he’d sprung a trap and was about to be turned upside down, hoisted into the air by an unseen rope. “Told us to bring the wool to a new fuller,” he said, his voice hesitant.
“Stachys?”
Onesimus nodded.
Pater looked at the ground, and Onesimus noticed the muscles in his square jaw ripple as he clenched and unclenched them. “You will not take the wool to Stachys,” he said, forcing his voice to be calm. “You’ll take it to Rufus. As we always have.” He pulled the wineskin out from under his cloak, took a long draw, and said, “The stupid boy thinks our wool should clothe the rich and soft of Hierapolis.” He looked out the window. “We will always clothe the Roman soldier.” Then he looked Onesimus in the face, eyes fierce, and said, “Take our wool to Rufus.” Onesimus had taken the wool to Rufus.
Philemon repeated his question, impatient. “Why Hierapolis?”
Onesimus studied his brother’s face, nerves jangling, calculating how to answer. From Pater’s visit last spring, Onesimus knew the point was to look for rich clients, but he wasn’t eager to say how he knew it, and he didn’t want to play his master’s game. “Don’t know, sir.”
Philemon looked smug. “Pater left our finances in disarray,” he said, with a hint of bitterness. “It falls on us to dig out.” He paused. “Now. How will we do that?”
Again, Onesimus said, “Don’t know, sir,” timing his eye-roll to avoid detection.
“Well, I can tell you how we won’t do it. By selling to low-profit military clients. Pater’s bunch. It’s the rich we need. Luxury vendors. And Hierapolis has plenty. We’ll visit three today.”
Onesimus suddenly fixed on a problem that could implicate him. “Sir,” he said, “our wool may not be good enough for those clients. Our fuller didn’t prepare the wool to . . .”
“Nonsense,” said Philemon, cutting him off. “Just this spring we had our wool washed and combed by the finest fuller in Colossae. Tertius is carrying a sample from that batch.”
Should he tell Philemon that Rufus and not Stachys had prepared the wool? Philemon would surely blame him for failing to take it to Stachys. And anyway, he’d tried to warn him. Maybe the vendors would still take it. He felt he’d said all he should. “Yes, sir.”
The road drifted from the river’s comforting gurgle toward the foothills on the north side of the valley. They passed stone outbuildings on the edge of dormant fields where cut grayed stalks, the remainder of a fall crop, poked through the mud like a man’s face in need of a shave. They walked in silence.
Philemon greeted two merchant groups that passed them on the road, heading in the opposite direction, their donkey-drawn carts stacked with wares from Smyrna. Each group told a similar story of bandits on the road two days before: merchants heading east, goods stolen, throats cut, bodies strewn beside the road. No one knew how many bandits there were since there’d been no survivors. Both groups warned them off the road at night. The story seemed not to perturb Philemon’s two beefy house slaves, but it set Onesimus on edge. He startled at every rustling bush and snapping twig. Philemon played the story down, but after the second telling, he, too, seemed anxious. They were only a party of four. Depending how many brigands there were, they could easily be outmatched. Onesimus lagged behind and drank from his wineskin, dulling his nerves.
By the fourth hour, the road began a gradual climb and traffic increased, fed by smaller country roads joining their route. This slowed progress, but Onesimus was relieved to be off the lonely stretch southeast of Hierapolis. Two miles further and they joined the road connecting Hierapolis to Laodicea, following it north with a steady stream of travelers on their way to market. The clouds lifted, revealing the calcareous cliffs of Hierapolis in the distance, spilling like rolls of steaming wool down the valley slope.
After midday, they reached the agora at the north end of the city, a massive open marketplace swirling with activity. They found a food stall and lunched on fried bread, goat cheese, and salted olives. The smell of animals wafted across the packed plaza. Merchants droned in multiple languages. The stall was adjacent to an open area, across which Onesimus noticed well-dressed customers perusing fettered naked people, chained to wooden stakes lodged in the ground. He stared, transfixed, and began to chew the inside of his lower lip.
Since his first brush with the slave market in Colossae, he’d counted himself lucky to be born on the estate. Though every slave was part of the master’s household, vernae were usually treated more as family than purchased slaves, who were more likely to be sold on. And to be sold at market was a roll of the dice. Without specific skills or education, the chances of ending up a prostitute were high, whether male or female. He thought of his mother. He could see customers across the way appraising the human stock, prodding and squeezing exposed flesh, scanning for defects. He noticed a young girl with a single fetter on her ankle. She was naked, trying to cover her flat chest with her twiggy arms, staring at the ground. A rail-thin man with a silver beard spoke to her. He put his hand under her chin and raised her face to look into her eyes. Tears glistened on her upturned cheeks. She couldn’t have been ten years old. Onesimus felt his palms sweating, and the inside of his lip was ragged.
He’d once known a girl named Chloe, a slave at the villa whom Pater had purchased when both she and Onesimus were eight years old. She was young and inexperienced, but she was cheap, and the kitchen slaves needed help. Onesimus was smitten. She was shy, earnest in her work, and her mousy bangs were cut straight across the middle of her forehead. But it was her eyes that captured him. To most people, he imagined, they seemed ordinary: small and brown, like most every other slave girl. But inside those delicate brown circles, Onesimus saw a sadness, a sadness too expansive for her bony frame, and yet there it was, a sadness he longed to hold and comfort, a sadness he understood. Mostly she washed dishes, cleaned pots, and scrubbed floors, out of sight, but sometimes she served in the dining room, and at those meals he could hardly remember eating, his mind a blissful fog. Sometimes he spied on her from the portico as she clipped herbs in the courtyard. And she knew it. They played chase with the other children in the field between the villa and the sheepfold, but, to them, there were only two children playing, her chasing him, him chasing her. Then, one day, a comrade of Pater came to town, on his way east. Chloe served them dinner, and the next day she was gone. When Onesimus asked Apphia what had happened, she told him Pater had sold the girl to his comrade for five times what he’d paid.