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584 DAKKNESS AND DAWN
the Church in Borne, he proposed that Nereus, and Junia,
who was now united to him in holy wedlock, should leave
Aricia, and, with the means which they possessed, should
establish a new home in his native Thyatira, or in Hierapolis,
or in Ephesus. Nereus gladly consented, for the gloom and
loneliness of Aricia weighed upon his spirits, and he was
haunted by the thoughts of the agonies which he had
witnessed in the imprisonment and death of his brethren
at Rome. Before they started, Onesinms sought a secret interview
with his cousin and foster-sister ACTE. He found
her still living in the Golden House, but profoundly uncertain
about the future. She had bathed the mangled corpse of
Nero with her tears ;
she had adorned his grave with flowers ;
she had ventured even to pray for his soul. To her he was
not the monster into which he developed, but still the youth
who had loved her, and whom she had loved. But now, amid
the terrible scenes which Rome was witnessing, and seemed
likely long to witness in the fierce struggles of rival generals
for power, her life was anxious. Apart from the obvious
perils which might befall her in the hands of such wretches
as Nymphidius and Tigellinus, she had long desired to escape
from that city of Circean splendour. Eagerly she offered
Onesimus to accompany him, and told him that now she, like
himself, was a baptised Christian. She resumed her old name
of Eunice, which she had borne as a child before the evil days
of Rome, and she had wealth sufficient to maintain them all.
Her preparations were made secretly, with the aid of the
Christian slaves in Caesar's household. She sold her jewels,
and, taking much of her property with her, sailed with Onesimus
and his wife and Nereus to Ephesus. They fixed their
home at Hi&fapolis, where they could enjoy the teaching of
the Deacon Philip, and where Acte, gladly serving as a deaconess
of the little Church, gave all her goods to the poor,
and lived in happy friendship with the virgin daughters of
the Evangelist. The children of Onesimus and Junia owed
much to her kindly nurture and teaching. In due time Onesimus
himself was ordained to the ministry, and became in
later years a bishop of the Church of Ephesus. There, when
he was quite an old man, in the year A. D. 107, he met the
martyr Ignatius of Antioch, when he was being conducted to
his martyrdom in the Colosseum by the decuria of soldiers