Pierre-Louis Gatier, almost twenty years ago in 1996, presented to the academic community an attempt to sketch the state of play of studies concerning the relationships between the ‘caravan city’ par excellence, Palmyra, and its closest western neighbour, the city of Emesa. That contribution constituted the first attempt at reconsidering and putting into discussion hypotheses and opinions, which, despite being formulated in the fifties, mainly by Henri Seyrig, were still prevalent in modern research. Gatier’s contribution affirmed Emesa’s right to an autonomous identity and an independent historical evolution despite the enormous disparity in the information available between the two cities. This chapter tries to show, through putting into discussion the epigraphic sources used to prove a direct link between the two cities and presenting some brand new ones, that if, on the one hand, Gatier’s Emesa could exist ‘sans Palmyre’, there is no convincing reason, on the other, to think that the Palmyrene trade network needed Emesa and that the goods from the East had to pass through Palmyra’s western neighbour to reach the Mediterranean coast.

I begin by highlighting three characteristics that ancient elites imagined that enslaved persons ought to have: usefulness, loyalty, and property. I start by noting how discourses of enslavement and utility are intertwined. The Shepherd’s concern for utility is most clearly expressed in its two visions of a tower under construction, in which enslaved believers are represented as stones who will be useful (or not) for the construction of the tower before the eschaton. Second, I turn to the concept of loyalty (pistis), suggesting that the Shepherd uses such language in a way that encourages God’s enslaved persons to exhibit loyalty to God at all costs. Finally, I point to how enslaved persons in antiquity were often characterized as commodified by placing the Shepherd alongside inscriptions about enslaved people from Delphi and documentary correspondence. Not only does the Shepherd portray its protagonist Hermas as lacking bodily autonomy while being exchanged between divine actors, but the text also calls on God’s enslaved persons to purchase other enslaved people who are imagined to be their physical property (e.g., as houses, fields) when they arrive in God’s city.

The introduction sets the scene at the catacombs of San Gennaro in Naples, where our only early Christian fresco from the Shepherd of Hermas is painted on a tomb wall. I lay out the thesis and roadmap for the book, namely, that the Shepherd crafts obedient early Christian subjects within the ancient Mediterranean discourse of enslavement. A brief overview of the Shepherd’s content is provided, as well as regarding its popularity and transmission history across the ancient, late ancient, and medieval worlds. I especially note how the Shepherd became a pedagogical tool in late antiquity, and that the Shepherd’s teachings are even placed in Jesus’s own mouth by some late ancient writers, heightening the stakes for understanding how enslavement is utilized in a text used to shape Christian thought and practice for centuries after its composition. Also provided is a brief introduction to slavery in antiquity to situate the reader, as well as outline some of the major influences on my approach to reading the text, especially womanist translational theory and Chris de Wet’s concept of doulology.