§ 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.