His behaviour in prison was refractory, for the jailer had taken a strong dislike to him, and delighted to humiliate this bird of finer feather than those who usually came under his charge. He was quite safe in doing so. There was little compassion in the breast of the steward who managed the slaves, and rarely, if ever, did he take the trouble to inquire how a prisoner was getting on, or whether he was alive or dead. Amid blows and insults the heavy days dragged on, and seemed interminable to the poor Phrygian youth. In the desperation of idleness he tried to find some amusement from scribbling with a nail on the plaster wall of his dungeon, and one day, thinking of the drunken bout which had reduced him to this level, he defiantly scrawled ‘When I am set free, I will drain every wine-jar in the house.’[68] ‘Will you?’ said the jailer, who had entered unobserved as he finished his scrawl. ‘You won’t have a chance just yet, my fine friend.’ He gave Onesimus a blow with his whip, which made him writhe with anguish, and said, ‘Thank Anubis, I shall be rid of you to-day. You are sent to the slave-prison (_ergastulum_).’ ‘Who sends me?’ asked Onesimus shuddering. ‘What’s that to you, _crucisalus_?’ said the slave, dealing him another blow. ‘Oh you writhe, do you, my fine bird? What will you do when the bulls’ hides rattle the _cottabus_ on your shoulders?’ What he said was true. That evening Onesimus was loaded with fetters and taken into the country. The sight of slaves in chains being hurried off to punishment was far too familiar to excite much notice in the streets of Rome, but it was torture to Onesimus to be thus exposed to the gaze and jeers of idle passers-by. He felt a painful dread lest any of his friends--above all, lest Acte, or Pudens, or Titus, or Junia--should see him in this wretched and disgraceful guise. No one, however, saw him, and that evening he was safely lodged in the slave-jail attached to Nero’s villa at Antium.