helpful, and it was a common name for slaves. The same idea was expressed by other names, as Chresimus, Chrestus (useful) ; Onesiphorus (profit-bringer, 2 Tim. i. 16); Symphorus (swit- able). Onesimus was a runaway Phrygian slave, who had com- mitted some crime and therefore had fled from his master and hidden himself in Rome. Under Roman law the slave was a chattel. Varro classified slaves among «implements, which he tlassifies as vocalia, articulate speaking implements, as slaves ; semvocalia, having a voice but not articulating, as oxen ; muta, dumb, as wagons. The attitude of the law toward the slave was expressed in the formula servile caput nullum jus habet; the slave has no right. The master’s power was unlimited. He might mutilate, torture, or kill the slave at his pleasure. Pollio, in the time of Augustus, ordered a slave to be thrown into a pond of voracious lampreys. Augustus interfered, but after- ward ordered a slave of his own to be crucified on the mast of a ship for eating a favorite quail. Juvenal describes a profligate woman ordering a slave to be crucified. Some one remonstrates. She replies: “So then a slave isa man, is he! ‘He has done nothing,’ you say. Granted. I command it. Let my pleasure stand for a reason” (vi., 219). Martial records an instance of a master cutting out aslave’s tongue. The old Roman legislation imposed death for killing a plough-ox; but the murderer of a slave was not called to account. Tracking fugitive slaves was a trade. Recovered slaves were branded on the forehead, con- demned to double labor, and sometimes thrown to the beasts in the amphitheatre. The slave population was enormous. Some proprietors had as many as twenty thousand.*
Have begotten in my bonds. Made a convert while I was a prisoner.
11. Unprofitable (aypyotov). A play on the word Ones?- mus profitable. Compare unprofitable (aypeios) servant, Matt. xxv. 80. These plays upon proper names are common both in
* See Lecky, ‘‘ History of European Morals,” i., 277, 302; ii., 36, 65, itis) Brace, ‘‘Gesta Christi,” ch. v. Déllinger, ‘‘The Gentile and the Jew,” ii 259 sqq. Becker, ‘‘Gallus,”’ excursus iii. Farrar’s ‘‘ Paul,” ii., 468 sqq.