The life of Onesimus of the Seventy
There he met the Apostle Paul, who taught him the faith and baptized him.
Paul knew Philemon himself, and wrote to him asking that Onesimus be forgiven and received back no longer as a slave but as a brother, and he sent the man with the letter in his own hand. Philemon forgave him and returned him to Paul at Rome. After Paul was put to death, Onesimus served the remaining apostles to the end of their lives, and was afterward made a bishop. He preached in Spain, in Patras, and again in Colossae, and in his old age he held the church at Ephesus. When Ignatius was taken through to Rome to die, Onesimus went out with other Christians to meet him. Under Trajan he was arrested and tried, held eighteen days in prison, and sent on to Puteoli, where he was stoned and then beheaded. A woman of rank took his body and laid it in a coffin of silver.
