21 - Unto These Least

East and west met on the shores of the little peninsula of Corinth, sustained on one side by the Aegean Sea and on the other by the Adriatic. In ancient times, the peninsula was called “The Bridge of the Seas”, for ships that brought the wealth of the East to Rome passed through Corinth. A canal was cut in the narrow strip of land that connected Corinth to the mother land, Achaia, which not only shortened the trip for ships, but avoided stormy weather as well. The port of Cenchrea covered the eastern end of the canal, and the port of Leukas the western, as the outlet to the Adriatic Sea.

Corinth was famous for her bronze foundries. The Corinthians possessed a secret formula for mixing Cyprian copper with gold and silver, producing various alloys in perfect proportions. The appearance of the finished products suggested great age, while at the same time acquiring a peculiar bell-like timber. Corinthian bronze was valued above all other metals in the ancient world, including gold.

Temples boasted that their gods and goddesses were fashioned from Corinthian bronze. Even the famous gates of the Jewish Temple were made of it. Bronze products were sold in the markets of Rome and Alexandria and were even transported into the mountain cities of Galatia. Roman patricians and provincial aristocrats took special pride in serving their guests in vessels of hammered Corinthian bronze.

The yellow copper ore came by ship from Cyprus into the port of Cenchrea where lines of slaves carried it onto the docks. Other slaves dragged huge tree trunks from the decks, cedars of Lebanon to be used as fuel for the ovens. It had been discovered that only cedar from Lebanon produced the right degree of heat to smelt the metals.

Still other slaves, pack-carriers, took the ore and lumber to the smelting ovens, which were in deep caverns hollowed out in the rocks. After the copper was melted down, the oven slaves dipped long-handled ladles into the boilers of molten copper and carried the fiery liquid to another set of boilers, where the skilled masters of the foundry mixed the metals in the proper proportions.

The bronze was cooled in many forms, vases, dishes, trays, or even gates and images of gods and goddesses. Then it was passed on to the cleaners and hammerers, who worked in the open air, by the seashore, or in the fields, under awnings of branches.

Besides their special appearance, the tone emitted by objects of Corinthian bronze was expected to be unique, too. Privileged slaves, with a fine eye for lines and a sensitive ear for musical sounds, supervised the hammering and cleaning of the metal. They examined the finished product for both appearance and tone.

When the statues and images, the bowls and vases were finished and passed testing, shining with the subtle color of their proper finish and ringing with the proper tone, they were carried by slaves to the port of Leukas at the other end of Corinth. There they were loaded on ships to be carried to every corner of the empire.

Thus a multitudinous chain of slaves connected the eastern and western seas across the peninsula.


The lives of most of these slaves were considered of little worth. The pack-carriers were considered the lowest form of human merchandise and were unskilled in any trade. They had only their brute strength to offer. They were fed according to their production, and when their strength failed, or they fell sick, they were simply thrown out, to be eaten by the beasts of the field and the carrion birds.

The oven slaves lived right by the ovens and never saw the light of day. Their food was let down at the end of a rope. They were not human beings, but moles, leading a subterranean life. They were trained in this special skill from earliest childhood, for only those who were long accustomed to it could endure the heat of the furnaces. They learned to endure the eternal heat of the caverns, to work and move in the midst of a furnace, and to breathe the fiery air. Their blood became a fiery liquid, and their limbs were the rods and pistons of a dead mechanism. A hot vapor clung to their bodies, which were pitted and marked with countless scars from the unceasing torrent of metal sparks. They looked less like slaves than like legendary wild demons.

The life of these cave-workers was short. When one of them died, his body was simply tossed into the flames. The ovens kept their jaws open, like some Moloch, swallowing generation after generation of the young.

The skilled masters who mixed the metals were held in greater esteem, for it required knowledge of the craft as well as keen judgment. So the craftsmen weren’t treated like the oven slaves. Their food was better, and their quarters more comfortable. However they were also watched more closely precisely because of their skill. The loss of such a slave would be a serious matter, for they might give away the secret of the craft to an outsider. Therefore, though their beds were comfortable, the mixers were chained to them and they were also never allowed to leave the caverns.

The rows of hammerers were generally made up of women and young children. Seated on the ground, a wooden block between their feet, they hammered and filed at the raw edges left on the images and vessels by the molds. As the overseers walked around, they would stop now and then to use the whip on the withered breast of some poor mother or on the thin face of a sleepy child as a way of “correcting” their mistakes.

Most of the children taken into this work had some sickness, or physical defect that kept them from being useful as house servants or prostitutes. These unfortunate discards of humanity were the dregs of the slave markets. Their buyers regarded them as inferior animals, and the bronze works of Corinth were full of them. Their youthful, tender hands were best fitted for the delicate, ceaseless hammering that reduced the metal to the needed consistency. But besides hammering and filing, the children also cleaned and polished the bronze. In fact, the polishing stalls were almost exclusively occupied by children. These wretched youngsters lived where they worked. At night their bodies collapsed in the stalls where they worked all day. In the morning the overseers woke them with the lash. They were given barely enough time to eat a flat cake of oat bread and a measure of water before they resumed the ceaseless labor that was their life.

Blindness occurred quite frequently among the child slaves, what with the dust from their files flying everywhere, and blind children were quite useless. When a child became blind, it was simply flung aside and driven away. Often a mother would see her child unchained and pushed out of the line, to crawl away like a beast into the heaps of filth, slag, ashes, and garbage that lay around the works. But if she tried to rise from her seat, a lash from the metal loaded whip reminded her where she was.

The mating of slaves was greatly encouraged, and the birth rate among them was high. But this fruitfulness did not yield good stock. Defective children were therefore the rule. They were bought and sold in lots. They perished and were easily replaced. It didn’t pay the bronze masters to treat their human cattle any better than they did. It was cheaper to squeeze their last energies out of them and buy a fresh stock.

* * * * *

When Paul baptized the household of the wealthy Stephanas, one of the servants in that household was a freed slave by the name of Portinaius. This man was originally brought in a shipment of slaves from Galatia after the suppression of a local rebellion. He was a Greek scholar, skilled in oratory, and had a pleasant voice Stephanas recognized his merits and abilities early, gave him a post of responsibility in his business, and used him as a reader.

Not long afterwards the master gave Portinaius his freedom. Not that this meant a whole lot. He did have privileges denied the slaves, but he was still considered Stephanas’ property. The owner always kept the power to revoke his manumission, and he still had no will or opinion of his own. Thus, when Paul baptized Stephanas, Portinaius was also baptized, whether he wanted to be or not.

Nevertheless, Portinaius was a man given to careful meditation, and he listened with honest attention and receptive readiness to Paul’s sermons in the synagogue of Justus, as well as to his speeches at the common meals. As a Greek, he was naturally repelled by the Jewish way of life, with its fascination with an unseen God. But he pondered what he heard long and closely. He began to understand that the Jewish God was not a product of man’s intelligence like the Greek gods were. The latter could only help man to the extent that man could help himself within the limits of his destiny. But the Jewish God was beyond all wisdom, power and weakness. He broke the chains of destiny and liberated man from the animal bond with nature, and in this activity He directed the course of man’s life.

Slowly but surely Portinaius grew into the Christian faith. He saw that salvation was not just for the great and mighty, who needed the protection of the gods in order to maintain their power, but He was also the salvation of the weak whose hopes had been extinguished and who were rejected and abandoned by the gods. Portinaius thought of those forlorn human beings who were condemned to the fiery darkness of the bronze works. Certainly they’d been abandoned by the gods and utterly rejected. Now there was one who was ready to accept them and take them under his wing, one who had suffered in his own flesh what they suffered every day, who had died the death of a slave. And yet he was the Son of God. He was ready to bring them into the Kingdom of God, where they would be seated around him and his heavenly throne.

As Portinaius read the Psalm to his master one day, he was suddenly filled with longing to bring the gospel to those who lived in “the valley of the shadow of death,” the slaves in the bronze foundries.


A very high and seemingly unbreakable wall separated the outside world from the world of the furnace slaves. But there is always some channel of communication to the outside world, secret exchanges of information. And in spite of the vigilance of the guards Portinaius was able to smuggle two slaves out of the caverns and to bring them to the synagogue of Justus so that they might hear the gospel from Paul.

It was on a Sabbath morning and the slave Lucius stood in the synagogue among the worshippers and listened to Paul’s sermon. Lucius was also a native of Galatia. He was now half blind and his body was thickly covered with the scars and pits of the metal sparks. And though he wasn’t yet forty, his face was old and wrinkled, and his flesh was withered on his pointed bones. Bent in half and clutching his meager garment of sackcloth, he listened to Paul’s words.

“When our earthly home is destroyed, we will yet have the house of God, which was not made with human hands, and which is eternal in the heavens.”

Lucius understood that in that house all were equal. There were no slaves and lords. He sighed and longed for the house of God. He thought of the peace and rest he would find in it, for he was weary with labor, and he hungered for rest.

No matter how eaten by the heat and charred by the sparks, his body could rise from the grave in glory and beauty. Though he lived in utter ignorance and blindness, in sin and uncleanness, he could rise with the resurrection and find a corner reserved for him in the house of God. Like one who struggles in a stormy sea, the prematurely aged slave caught at the rope of salvation thrown to him before the shadows of death closed on him.

Portinaius led Lucius to Timothy, who baptized him in the name of Jesus Christ.

That Sabbath evening Lucius the slave was admitted to the common feast in the synagogue. The small lamps burned modestly and Lucius shrank back against the wall so as not to be observed. But Priscilla saw his fear, went to him, and with her motherly hand drew him closer to the table where the apostle was breaking bread.

“I’m a slave,” said Lucius, trembling. “Will the lord Christ inhabit this body?”

“We are all free in the lord. We have all become children of God through him.”

Paul took the flat cakes of unleavened bread and broke them. He gave a piece to Stephanus and a piece to Lucius. Then he took up the beaker of wine, and had each of them, master and slave, drink it. And he said to both of them, “Take, eat and drink. This is my body, which I have broken for you.”

And when Paul gave Lucius the kiss of peace, Lucius felt that he was part of the body of Christ.

Word spread quickly in the underground world of bronze foundries about this offer of redemption. The story was repeated often about the Man-God who stood on the threshold of God’s house inviting all to come in. They heard the whole story of the life, sufferings, and death of this Man-God and how he would receive them, wipe away their tears, and comfort them for their sufferings.

* * * * *

A woman sat with her children among the polishers and hammerers. She was working on a vase on her knees, bringing out the special luster of the Corinthian bronze. It was thought that the oils of a women’s body softened the color of the bronze. The vase the woman was polishing with her flesh was a particularly precious work of art. It had the form of a young girl’s body, supple and curved, with a long slender neck, and was intended for one of the richest customers of the bronze-master.

A child sat near the woman, perhaps six years old. But the child’s face was scarcely human, for it was covered with sores. Heavy blisters covered her eyes so that she could hardly see. She held a bronze cup in her bony little hands, part of the set that belonged to the vase, and with her last remnants of strength, was trying to imitate her mother in polishing it against her hips. But there was neither warmth nor softness in the child’s body. All that could be seen was a yellowish matter mixed with blood, which stained the cup’s surface. An overseer saw this and passed word to one of the whip carrying slaves. A brutal hand was laid on the child. When the mother half rose, she was immediately flung back by the flick of the lash. With a choked cry, she turned to the woman at the next block.

“Tell me quickly, what is his name, the one who waits on the other side, the one Lucius told us about. Quick, his name!”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Jesus Christ, please take my child to you.”