Are You a Slave?

For a slave who is given their freedom, they generally always take on the name of their master as one of their own names. Even though it wasn't legal for them to have any rights to relationships in their own households, what sort of relationships were slaves having with each other? So they were forming what they might think of as marriages, or they were having affairs between masters and slaves,. very, very common. They had friendships, very close friendships. We have very little evidence that comes directly from slaves, but we do have some in epitaphs. For example, we have inscriptions that talk about contubernium, so not connubium, which is marriage, but cont