A well-to-do Christian of Colossae, converted through Paul ('you owe me your very self', Philemon 19) though Paul had never visited the city, and host to a congregation that met in his house. He owned at least one slave, Onesimus, who ran away — and the private letter Paul wrote him, the shortest in the Pauline collection, is a masterpiece of tact asking him to take the runaway back as a brother. ⚠ Apphia (v2) is very likely his wife and Archippus, 'our fellow soldier', probably his son (the Archippus charged to 'fulfil your ministry' at Colossians 4:17). What Philemon actually did the letter never tells us — but the fact that it was kept and copied is often read as a quiet answer: he must have complied, and perhaps freed the man.