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
Onesimus and his enslaved mother, Apphia—Pater’s former concubine—walk in Pater’s funeral procession. Apphia walks with the dignitaries at the rear of the procession, but Onesimus’s half-brother, Philemon, forces Onesimus to walk with his fellow slaves instead. During the procession, Onesimus recalls a night when his drunken father, Pater, physically abused him and Apphia.
Freeborns and freedmen sat on benches at long tables in the dining room of the domus—a funeral feast was no time for reclining on couches, especially when the deceased was a soldier. The main course of pork in sweet wine sauce had been cleared. A shift of house slaves now served dessert—dried plums, salted almonds, and cakes soaked in honey. Lamps in wall niches broadcast the smell of olive oil and spread a guttering orange light over the tapestries and faded murals of battle scenes that covered the walls. The hall thrummed with subdued conversation.
Onesimus stood with Neos and the other non-serving slaves at the periphery of the room, eating from small plates they held in their hands. He eyed Philemon, who sat among the dignitaries, and bit down, crushing an almond and grinding it between his molars. He prayed a silent prayer to Artemis, one last appeal for freedom. So often he’d sacrificed to her at the crossroads temple and called upon her in the mountains. He’d been faithful, he thought. She’d answer his prayer, and at the next funeral he’d sit with the freedmen. He swallowed the almond and began to clip the inside flesh of his lower lip with his front teeth.
After dessert, one of Pater’s comrades rose to give the eulogy, wearing the gear of a Roman cavalryman, his iron helmet slightly askew. He was inebriated, but he still clutched his goblet. He staggered to the head of the room, spilling wine on slaves who braced him as he passed. He mounted the makeshift rostrum to face the crowd, his eyelids at half-mast, removed his helmet, set it on the platform, and noticed his goblet was empty. “Wine!” he called out. A house slave with a flagon scurried to fill his cup. After several gulps, he began to speak, slurring and slowed by the drink.
“Our greatest poet . . .” He broke off, already lost, then began again: “As Virgil says, ‘Of arms and a man I sing.’” Another long pause, and he began to wobble. “Pater was a soldier. A man of honor. Duty!” The last word was gruff, as if he were coughing. He entered a rambling story of how Pater’s wife, Atychia, had died in childbirth, and how Pater had joined the auxiliaries in his grief and spent twenty-five years in the Roman army, fighting in Illyricum and Germania, winning Roman citizenship for his family.
As Pater’s comrade prated, comparing his father’s fighting prowess to that of Aeneas, Onesimus shifted from one foot to the other, uncomfortable, tired of waiting. He scanned the layer of standing slaves that lined the walls, looking for his mother, now anxiously biting deeper into the skin of his lower lip and cheek. He hadn’t thought of it before, but if they were both to be freed, maybe they should stand together; it would make for easier toasting, easier congratulations from the rest of the slaves. His eyes completed the pass around the room, but he couldn’t see her. The speechmaker’s body-wobble grew to a slow gyration, like a spinning top starting to angle. He must have missed her. Maybe someone taller was standing in front of her? He looked again, more carefully this time, but still couldn’t spot her.
Just as he gave up looking, he caught sight of her at a table in the back of the room. Sitting. His heart drummed in his chest, butterflies in his stomach, and his teeth cut deeper into the soft flesh of his cheek. He scanned the tables but saw no other slaves sitting. Apphia was a rule-follower; she would only sit with permission. Had Philemon allowed it because she was an old woman? Because she needed rest after the procession? Because she’d raised Philemon as her own son? Because he loved her like his mother? Philemon had let her walk in the procession with Monica and the rest of the free people. And now she was sitting. The butterflies fled, replaced by a clamp around his gut, and his heart began to batter his ribs again. Onesimus drained his goblet.
The amplitude of the speechmaker’s gyration was now pronounced. His posture had become the topic of whispers throughout the dining hall, his axis tilting and rotating perilously. He opened his mouth to continue, but instead of speech, he produced a sonorous belch. Finally losing his balance, he dropped his goblet, tried to recover it, but slipped in the pool of wine on the rostrum. He pitched onto his rump, passed gas, and bounced off the edge of the platform, onto the floor. Another comrade, only slightly less drunk, hoisted the speechmaker to his feet and escorted him to a bench while two slaves scurried to wipe up the mess.
Philemon rose, quelling the crowd’s murmur. He made his way to the front, sober as a magistrate. The slaves leaned in, anxious for the reading of the will, but Onesimus saw his brother carried no papyrus. His spirit sank, and his mind caught up with his body: there’s no will; he’s only freeing Apphia.
Philemon mounted the tidied rostrum. “Now,” he said. His eyes widened, defiant, as if warning an invisible challenger. “Now,” he said again, the word grating at Onesimus, like a strigil with no oil, scraping against raw skin. “Thank you, Clopas, for that . . . illuminating eulogy. We forgive you its one flaw—that you quoted the wrong poet.” Then, with a hint of dark pleasure, he said, “My father was more Bacchus than Aeneas, if I may so boldly compare him to a god.”
Several house slaves suppressed a snicker, but Onesimus stared at his brother, unblinking, hoping against his premonition, now tasting blood from his cheek.
“Though I’ll begin by quoting a better poet,” said Philemon, “I regret I cannot quote a happier line. Ovid tells us, ‘No pleasure is ever unmingled; anxiety always intrudes upon joy.’ And so it is for us today. Our joy in feasting is mingled with the anxiety of loss.” Philemon’s tone was devoid of feeling. “And, no doubt, you’re expecting me to read my father’s will.” A murmur again rippled through the crowd. “Well, I’m sorry to say my father has increased our anxiety by failing to leave one—or at least one we could find.”
At this blunt admission, half the hall gasped. Onesimus could feel his extremities numbing as he retreated into himself, a despairing inner monologue competing with Philemon’s words. Of course it’s like this; how could it not be like this? Onesimus heard the next part of the speech as if Philemon were in a different room, connected to the dining hall by a long pipe that muffled the sound. He wondered if he was dreaming. His lower back began to ache, his head hurt, and his eyes became distant, vacant. He would remain a slave. His hateful brother’s slave. He looked at the floor, his face burning with shame at his misplaced confidence. He felt trapped, an animal in a cage.
“Now. Several members of our party tonight have sworn publicly they witnessed and sealed the will,” said Philemon. “But we haven’t found it. As a result, until and unless the will is found, the rules of intestacy govern, according to which all my father’s property and estate pass to his remaining family. Now,” he said again, the room in his grip. “As to the manumission of slaves . . . since we cannot know the deceased’s mind on the matter, it would not be right to free any of his slaves.”
A collective groan issued from the slave contingent. Not even Apphia, thought Onesimus, staring at his boots, wringing his hands, anger rekindled.
“Nevertheless, since my father is not survived by a wife, and since I am thereby the sole inheritor of the estate, it is within my discretion to distribute what is now my property according to how I imagine my father would have willed.”
Onesimus snapped back to attention, eyes on his brother, shoulders tense. The smell of anxiety drifted from his armpits to his nostrils.
“And, within the limits of reason and Roman law, it is our tradition that deserving slaves should be freed upon the death of their master. But who is deserving in this case? A question to which I have given much thought and prayer. Again, we cannot know my father’s mind with certainty. Nevertheless, I have no doubt of at least one dispensation he would have willed. And so I conclude with that alone, namely the freedom of his faithful slave, Apphia.” He picked out Apphia from the back of the room and smiled magnanimously at her. “Let us raise our cups to Apphia.”
Onesimus stood in silence, stunned, failing even to hear Philemon’s toast, let alone raise his goblet.