ABSTRACT
I want to look at a striking series of stories about loyalty and betrayal on the parts of slaves and wives that Roman men told each other. These stories form their own subgenre in Roman literature and show a consistent set of narrative patterns, characteristics, and tropes for both slaves and wives. These “Tales of Loyalty” provide us with powerful testimony to the ambiguous position shared by slaves and wives in Roman society, the Roman family, and the Roman male mind, a liminal position that these stories, as they were told and retold, help construct and maintain.
