‘Wanted, a fugitive slave, Aged about 17. Handsome, with dark curly hair, Named Onesimus. Any one who will give him up, or indicate where he may be arrested, shall receive a reward of a thousand sesterces.’
To be quite sure of his prey, Dama stole away so as to approach Onesimus from behind, and coming up to him tapped him smartly on the shoulder and said ‘Onesimus.’
‘Yes?’ said Onesimus with a violent start, taken completely off his guard.
‘I thought so,’ said Dama, with an unpleasant smile. ‘Come with me, my gay fugitive. Cæsar can’t possibly spare such a lively and good-looking slave as you; and I shall be very glad of a thousand sesterces.’
Onesimus tried to dart away in flight, but the remorseless hand of Dama clutched his shoulder with too tight a grasp, and with a gesture of despair he remained silent.
‘Rescue! rescue!’ cried some of the crowd who pitied him, and with whom he was a favourite; and as no soldiers or police were in sight one or two stepped forward to give the youth a chance.
‘Rescue?’ said Dama, looking around him with cool contempt. ‘Don’t you know who I am? Do you dare to interfere with the arrest of a runaway from Cæsar’s Palace?’
The crowd fell back awe-struck before the awful name of Cæsar, and Dama despatched a slave to bring fetters from Nero’s villa hard by. Onesimus was once more a chained criminal with a destiny before him even more horrible than any of which he had yet been in danger. He thought of the poor wretch to whom he had given drink as he hung on his cross. Would that be his own fate of agony now in the flush and heyday of his youth?
Next morning he was sent off towards Rome. He thought of trying to communicate with Acte, who had been deeply grieved by losing sight of him. But this was impossible. There was no one to take any message for him. He was told that not only Callicles--on whom fell in part the disgrace of his escape--but Nero himself was bitterly incensed against him, first, for his unpardonable indiscretion, then for his flight, and lastly--though this was a secret motive--because it had come to his ears that Onesimus had been the slave who had defeated the midnight attempt on the life of Britannicus. Onesimus, when he had drunk too much Sabine wine, had sometimes forgotten all reticence, and Nero believed that it was through him that certain dark secrets of the Palace had come to be whispered among the lower orders of the Roman population. Acte herself would have been powerless to defend him. One day Octavia, finding that her purple robes had been looked after less skilfully than they had been when under his care, had asked some question about him in the presence of Nero. The Emperor was angry at the mention of his name. Some slaves had been in the room on the occasion, and the circumstance had become notorious in the gossip of the Palace. The unhappy young Phrygian was told that he would probably be crucified; but if not, he would be tied to the furca and scourged, perhaps to death, with the horrible thongs.