07 - Antonius the Stable Boy

Tigellinus, the criminal condemned and pardoned, and now the favorite of Nero, owed his good fortune to his skill as a horse trainer. Nero passionately loved horses and often participated in chariot races, and appointing Tigellinus as stable master was considered a high honor. But Tigellinus had higher ambitions. He wanted the highest position under Caesar – commandant of the Praetorian Guard. Once old Burrus was put out of the way, Tigellinus, with Poppea’s help, realized his dream.

Among the stable boys under Tigellinus was a simple lad named Antonius, one of hundreds of unskilled servants and slaves who performed the menial work. His food was poor, his clothing shabby. In winter he walked through the slushy or muddy streets on his errands wearing a thin tunic, with arms and legs exposed, and no covering for his feet.

One day some comrades invited Antonius to visit Paul, and Paul led him to Christ. So the slave in the flesh became free in the spirit. After his baptism, he ate the common meal at Priscilla’s house as an equal with freedmen. This made him aware that he actually had a will of his own and could think for himself. The human beast acquired a human dignity that none of the more privileged slaves of Tigellinus had.


It was a custom in Rome that whenever a son was born to a Roman freedman, regardless of whether it was born to his wife or to a slave, the new-born child would be laid at the feet of his father. If the father adopted the child, it was brought up with the other children of the household. If he rejected it, the child was done away with. This usually meant that it was thrown into the Cloaca like a newborn puppy or kitten.

One morning, Tigellinus was having his wiry body, and his muscular arms and legs, bent by much riding, massaged by his slaves, while one of his servants was helping him memorize a poem in which Nero was being likened to Orpheus. The overseer of the house entered, and announced that Tigellinus’ beloved Egyptian slave-concubine had given birth to a son.

After the massage, Tigellinus sat in his library with the tiny infant lying on a sheet before him. Its red hands and legs were lifted in the air, its face was puckered, its mouth open in a long wail, and its eyes were closed. But even before the child was brought in, Tigellinus’ knew what he would do. Now that he had risen to the first position in the empire under Caesar, he wanted no more of his bastards cluttering up the place. He was planning to take a new wife, and he didn’t care to burden her with the upbringing of another offspring of one of his slaves.

Therefore he turned away from the infant, looked angrily at the overseer of the house, and muttered through thin lips, “Expose it!”

The infant was taken away, and the order to have it drowned was given, not to one of the educated slaves, but to the stable boy Antonius.

Now it never occurred to Antonius to disregard or challenge the order, for there was nothing unusual about it and he was committing no crime. On the contrary, the only crime would be disobedience to the order, for which he could be thrown to the wild beasts.

Human life was of such little value in Rome that when some valuable horse was thrown and trampled by the other horses during a race, there was no thought for the rider, but only for the irreplaceable racer. The Romans were long accustomed to gladiators shedding blood in the arena by killing each other or by slaves thrown to wild beasts. The sight of a human’s death brought no pity. This was the world in which Antonius had been brought up.

So as he threaded his way through the streets of Rome toward the opening of the Cloaca Maxima at the foot of the Capitoline, where the great sewer emptied into the Tiber, bearing this tiny bundle of life wrapped in a sheet in his arms, he was barely conscious of his mission.

But as he approached the opening of the Cloaca Maxima, feeling the warmth of the quivering, wailing infant, he suddenly remembered something Paul had taught him.

“God has compassion on all men. He sent his Son down to suffer torment and death, so that he might redeem all mankind with his blood. And they who believe in Christ must be like him, ready to sacrifice themselves, even unto death, for their fellow men. They must love their fellow men even as Christ did, in order to be one with him.”

Antonius stopped dead. Paul had made him the equal of all believers. Antonius believed that he must act in all things as Christ would have acted. He remembered other words of Paul.

“Every man is born in the image of God, and all men are made of the same flesh.”

“Born in the image of God!” thought Antonius, in sudden horror. “This is a child of God, and it is my brother. It belongs to Christ, and it is my brother.”

Antonius resolved to disobey his master’s order. He would not throw the infant into the waters of the Cloaca Maxima. He would carry it to the other side of the Tiber, and he would leave it in an orphanage maintained near the synagogue. The women there would receive it and care for it.

But as soon as he came to this resolve, he was seized by a great fear. What was this? He had decided? But a slave cannot decide. A slave has neither will nor soul. He wasn’t his own man, he was the instrument of his master. His mind revolted from the dastardly deed, but what could he do? In his mind, he saw the overseer, the iron collar, the arena. He saw the great fish swimming in the basin in his master’s garden, its huge, slimy jaws, with their double rows of teeth, opening for him. He remembered a slave, who though Tigellinus’ favorite, had been thrown to the crocodiles.

No, he dared not have a will of his own. He was a dumb slave, the instrument of the will of another. And covered with the sweat of his conflict, Antonius reached the sewer’s opening.

The Cloaca Maxima was one of the greatest engineering feats of the Roman world. From ancient times it had been emptying the filth and refuse of Rome into the Tiber. This included not just garbage, but gladiators, criminals, and rebels taken in battle, brought to Rome to show off its triumph, then beheaded and thrown into the sewer, to feed the countless tuna fish breeding in the waters of the river.

The banks of the Tiber were also places of refuge for the poorest of Rome’s citizens as well as for its sick. When Antonius came there with his wailing burden, he saw, lying on the stones, many vagabonds, ragged, hungry, and verminous.

“If Caesar were only as generous with his bread for poor citizens as the nobles are with their bastards for the fishes!” one vagabond was saying.

Antonius stood paralyzed at the wide, black entrance of the Cloaca. The waves beat outward from the dark interior, bringing a sickening odor. Filth, rags, and animal carcasses floated on the surface. Antonius tried to detach the warm bundle from his body, but he couldn’t. There was a violent agitation in his heart, and his limbs trembled.

Suddenly he jumped back from the sewer. He thought for sure that he saw his own body floating on the miasmal waters. He felt himself about to be thrown in.

Then he cried, “Jesus, help me,” and he sank to his knees, clutching his burden. “What was I about to do? I almost threw myself into the black hole. But it was you, Jesus, who rescued me. I would have thrown both our lives into the water, but you saved me, and made me part of you.”

He pressed the infant close to him, bent down to the earth, and murmured, “Thank you, Jesus, for saving me and this little one from the mouth of the pit.”

In comparison with the horror that was just averted, all the other horrors, the lead-loaded lash, the beasts of the arena, the crocodiles, all melted into nothingness. Assurance flowed back into Antonius’ heart. Whatever happened to him, Christ was waiting on the other side to receive him with outstretched arms. He, Antonius the stable boy, would be one with Christ for the torments he suffered for his sake. He knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that what he was doing was good and right and proper. He knew he could do nothing else. No longer was he a slave without a soul, a dead implement for the fulfillment of another’s will.

Yes, his body was at the mercy of his master, but his soul was free in Christ. And like any free man, he could now do what he knew was right.


Antonius walked with swift and certain footsteps away from the Tiber and toward the Aventine hill. The house he’d visited there on occasion at night, stealing away from the slave dormitory, was where the ones who taught him the meaning of brotherhood in Christ lived. Priscilla and Aquila had welcomed him into the companionship, and a man who had personally lived with, eaten with, and learned from Christ was sometimes there telling stories about spreading the gospel through the world. Antonius knew that in this house, his tiny charge would be received.

When Priscilla received Antonius at the door, her look of astonishment only deepened when she learned why he was there. She thought she’d seen everything. But this was the first time that a slave had come, bearing his lord’s offspring, which he had saved from death at the peril of his life. But once her first astonishment was past, she thought, What could be more natural? Antonius was bringing a soul to her, a little one to be raised up in the faith of Christ instead of being given to the waters of the Tiber.

Priscilla was already overburdened with the tasks of the congregation, so she couldn’t take the little one herself. Plus, she and Aquila were preparing to move to Ephesus at Paul’s request, and they couldn’t very well take a newborn infant on such a perilous journey. So Priscilla decided to put the child into an orphanage until she could find some god-fearing woman of the congregation to give the child to. There were two such orphanages, one founded by the Jews many generations before, and one recently opened by the Christians. Priscilla veiled herself, and with characteristic impetuosity, hurried along with Antonius across the Sublicius Bridge.

The synagogue stood among the narrow, tortuous alleys of the Jewish quarter, among the houses packed with Jews and poverty. Around the synagogue were a schoolhouse, a ritual bath, and a hospice. Nearby there was a hall, an annex, which had been turned into an orphanage. It consisted of a single large room with an earthen floor and rows of benches around the walls. Here the good and pious Mary, aided by the sisters of the church, had installed the orphanage. And here the son of Tigellinus, the mightiest man in Rome after Caesar, was left, to be cared for with other orphans and to be given to some Christian woman for a Christian upbringing.