Luke’s overseer also has some of the traits of a second stock comedic character, the tricky slave. These characters always hoodwink their masters, always are exposed, but always get away with it somehow. In Plautus’s play Mostellaria, the tricky slave Tranio gets pardoned at the end; the master threatens to have him crucified, and only relents when a peer acts as intercessor. But in Epidicus, the tricky slave Epidicus is first vilified and tied up for the tricks he has played on his master, but when