Edwin A Abbott

Onesimus Edwin A Abbott

In the last year of the Emperor Tiberius I and my twin- brother Chrestuswere found lying in one cradle, exposed with a great number of otherbabes upon the steps of the temple of Asclepius, in Pergamus, a city ofBithynia. Sign or token of our parents, whether they were free-born orslave, there was none; but only a little silver seal hung round my neck, andon the seal these words in Greek characters, I LOVE THEE, and on mybrother Chrestus another of the same fashion, bearing the inscription, TRUST ME. Many a time during the days of my wandering have I spokenreproachfully in my heart, saying that our parents gave us small cause fortrust, and that it was poor love to send out into the rough world twoinnocent babes with no other equipment against evil than these slight toys. But the hand of the Lord was in it, to turn this evil into good in the end. Ammiane the wife of Menneas was the name of our new mother. Her ownson Ammias was but lately dead; and that which drew her kind heart to usmore than to any other among so large a multitude of poor babes therepitifully lying on the temple steps, was that in my brother Chrestus sheseemed to discern a likeness to her lost one. Menneas took us, together with Ammiane, to his house in Lystra, a city ofLycaonia, where was the better part of his estate; and soon afterwards hedied. But his widow, the good Ammiane, to whom old Menneas had left allhis possessions, treated us as if we had been her own children, and taughtus to call her mother; and we had no thought but she was our motherindeed. Yet as there had been no formal adoption of us according to law, we were still in the eyes of the law not free, but slaves; for so runs the law, that whosoever is exposed as a child and saved and reared, becomes theslave of them that rear him. For our enfranchisement had been firstdelayed, and then forgotten in the sickness and death of Menneas; and bythat time we were so established in the household that none questioned butwe had been enfranchised, and all thought of it was laid aside. Theref