Onesimus

I was awakened by the sound of music, ill played, as though by a beginner; and for a time, betwixt asleep and awake, I lay still without moving, not knowing what had become of me, or where I was. But presently the music came to a sudden stand, and a voice cried, “May the all-powerful Syrian Goddess, Parent of all things, and the holy Sabazius and the Idæan mother strike thee dead, thou dolt whom a week’s labor has not sufficed to teach thy notes. A pretty flute-player art thou. I am a ruined man with thee.” With that, I started up and beheld an old man, very fat and with a smooth face and having a cast in his eye; and by his side a youth, whom he was attempting to teach to play on the flute; but neither could the pupil learn, nor had the teacher skill to teach. I soon perceived from his attire and language, as well as from the ass bearing the image of the goddess, and the company of dancing girls who were with him, that he was one of the begging priests of Cybele; and it seemed that his flute-player had deserted him so that he could gain no money from the people by his sacred dances, for want of the music. After watching them for a short time (unknown to them, for the corner wherein I had been lying was very dark) I lost patience to see how ill the old priest taught and the youth learned; and coming forward I took the flute from the hands of the youth and shewed him how he was to use it. At first the old man stood speechless with astonishment at the suddenness of my coming in upon them; but when he perceived that I had some skill in music, he asked whether I could make shift to play for him. I told him that I knew not that kind of music, and would have gone forth from the cot without more words; but he stayed me and begged me to give some proof of my skill; saying I must at least eat and drink with him and his company, for the village people had given them two kids and a cask of wine. So I was over-persuaded by my hunger, and after we had eaten our fill, he gave me to drink of unmixed wine, because, said he, there was no water nigh; and my thirst constrained me to drink. Then he began again to ply me with importunities to go with him at least as far as Pergamus, adding that if I wished to escape notice (and here he looked at me as if he knew that I had some secret) I could take no better course than this, but if I left him, who knew but questions might be asked, and I might be noticed more than I desired? And hereon, when he saw me wavering, and inflamed with wine, he put the flute once more into my hands, and called out that the dance should begin; and thus saying he led the ass into the midst of the chamber, bearing the image of the goddess which was covered with a silver veil. Then I began to play and the women to dance, and the priest applauded and cried that the music should go faster. At first I played against my will and my heart was not in it; but as I looked upon the women dancing in their many-colored tunics with their eyebrows darkened, and their Phrygian caps on their heads, and their saffron shawls streaming in the air, all dancing, at first slowly and then more quickly round the image, by degrees it was given to Satan to have power over me because I had not resisted him. So I began to take a pleasure in it, and I said, surely now is the time to cast aside all virtue and forget the name of goodness and to begin a new life, wallowing in all sin. And even as Satan thus moved me, I began to play the music more furiously, as if possessed by some demon, and the women, after their manner, brandishing their swords and battle-axes, began to leap more furiously to the sound of cymbal and tambourine, and they bared their arms and shoulders, scourging themselves with whips wrought of pieces of bone till the blood flowed out; and because it flowed not fast enough, they scourged themselves harder, yea, and in their leaping they bit their own flesh and screamed like wild beasts; and then the old priest stopped the music and clapping me on the shoulder bade me pledge him in another cup of wine, for I must needs go with him to Pergamus and be his flute-player; and I like a dumb beast could not say No, but drank of his wine and so consented.

§ 2. OF MY LIFE AT PERGAMUS

Let it be permitted me to pass over the story of my wanderings until I came to Pergamus. Not that I would conceal or gloss over any of the sins I committed at this time. Yet although thou, O Lord, hast forgiven all things methinks I could not set down those deeds of darkness, without seeming to pass through a second course of sin. Suffice it that in all the acts of my companions, in all their thieving and lying, their blasphemings, revellings and impurities, I was not behind any, the vilest of the vile. But it pleased the Lord, after three months of thus wallowing in the mire, to hold out the hand to me though it were but for a season; and it was after this manner. When we came to Pergamus, going on a certain day to visit a priest of Asclepius I chanced to speak of the children that were daily exposed upon the Temple steps, and I shewed him (but not as from myself) the token of my brother Chrestus, saying that it had been given to me by one of my acquaintance to whom it had belonged, who was now dead. When the priest read the inscription TRUST, he started and changed color, and very earnestly questioned me whether my acquaintance had ever spoken to me touching a brother exposed at the same time, and wearing a token with another inscription, mentioning at the same time the words of it I LOVE THEE. Then it was my turn to start, and I confessed that I had heard mention of it, but that this brother also was long since dead. “Truly then,” said the priest, “I sorrow greatly for their poor mother’s sake, who came to the Temple not more than six or seven months ago, to make inquiry concerning two children who had been exposed in the first year of the emperor Claudius, twins, and wearing two such tokens as you have described.” So then, comparing the date, as well as the other circumstances, I knew that the children could be no other than myself and my brother Chrestus.

Now all my dissimulation was swallowed up in the eagerness of my 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 breathThen Eucharis went down to deathWhom I fondly called my own,Not knowing she was but a loanLent by Death, who from belowSends short delights to make long woe.Too short a loan, poor twenty years,For such vast interest of tearsWhich we must weep, who now remainsTo 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.