The Shepherd does not merely depict believers as enslaved persons, rather the very writtenness of the Shepherd itself – its composition, transmission, and readership – is inflected by the discourse of enslavement. I explore the Shepherd’s portrayal of Hermas as an enslaved person expected to copy the book given to him by the Church, to write and disseminate the Shepherd’s commandments to God’s enslaved persons, and to read aloud the visions and revelations he experienced to others. I put the Shepherd in conversation with Cicero and Pliny the Younger, who exemplify the use of enslaved persons for literary labor and the production of a “creative genius” or “sole author” through the labor of others. I note how the Shepherd, in line with other Christian revelatory literature like Revelation, is more explicit about the use of enslaved literary labor than many Roman texts and provides a rare avenue for exploring how ancient writers conceptualized and portrayed enslaved scribes. The Shepherd’s own composition and dissemination by Hermas is, I argue, inflected by its participation in the ancient Mediterranean discourse and logics of enslavement.