Sickened with miseries, Onesimus gradually made his way to Pompeii. Every street and wall of the bright little Greek town bore witness to the depths of degradation into which the inhabitants had fallen, and the youth found that the radiant scene, under the shadow of Vesuvius and its glorious vineyards by that blue and sparkling sea, was a garden of God indeed, but, like that of the Cities of the Plain, awaiting the fire and brimstone which were to fall on it from heaven. He was specially disgusted because, alien as he was now from all Christian truth, he saw on the walls of a large assembly-room in the Street of the Baths a mass of scribblings full of deadly insults towards the Christians. One in particular offended him, for, by way of coarse satire on some Christian teacher, it said:-- ‘Mulus hic muscellas docuit.’ ‘Here a mule taught small flies.’ It was evidently no place for any one who still loved Christianity. Hurrying from its fascination of corruption, to which he felt it only too possible that he might succumb, he was for some time reduced to the very brink of starvation, and was at last driven to live on such fruits and berries as he could pluck from the trees and hedges. Once, while he was trying to reach some wild crab-apples in a place by the side of a little stream, which was overgrown with dense foliage, he slipped, and fell crashing through the brushwood into the deep and muddy water which was hidden by the undergrowth. Too weak to rise and struggle, he could only just support himself by clinging to a bough, when his cries were heard. A labourer came and rescued him, and left him sitting in the sunlight to dry his soaking rags. And now he thought that there was nothing left him but to die, and seriously meditated whether it would not be best to fling himself into the green-covered sludge of black water from which he had been rescued, and so to end his miseries. A sound arrested him, and, lifting his head, he saw a group of the eunuch priests of the Syrian goddess approaching along the road, one of whom shook the jingling sistrum which had attracted his attention. They were a company of seven, and were men taken from the dregs of the populace. With them was a stout youth, who rode an ass which carried their various properties, the chief of which were musical instruments, and the image of the goddess wrapped in an embroidered veil. As they passed they eyed him curiously, and stopped a few paces beyond him as though for a consultation. ‘A likely youth,’ he heard one of them say, ‘though now he looks thin and miserable. We have long wanted another servant. Would not he do for us, Philebus?’ ‘Probably a runaway slave,’ said another. ‘What does that matter to us?’ said Philebus. ‘We can say that he called himself free-born, and told us that he ran away from the cruelties of a step-mother--or anything else we choose to invent. I will go and question him.’