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  • Potestas Populi: Participation populaire et action collective dans les villes de l’Afrique romaine tardive (vers 300–430 apr. J.-C.) by Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira
  • Éric Fournier
Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira Potestas Populi: Participation populaire et action collective dans les villes de l’Afrique romaine tardive (vers 300–430 apr. J.-C.) Bibliothèque de l’Antiquité Tardive 24 Turnhout: Brepols, 2012 Pp. 375. €75.00.

In this learned work of “history from below” in the best tradition of E. P. Thompson, Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira investigates the role of the people in North African cities of the fourth and fifth centuries. Prompted by interpretations of the plebs as a tool of the powerful in a society controlled by elites, Magalhães argues instead that the populus constituted an active political player in the urban landscape. For the author, events that our sources typically present as violent demonstrations of the turba imposing its will on civic or religious authorities involved neither uncontrolled mobs regressing to primitive behaviors nor factions carrying out the will of controlling patrons. He claims, rather, that protests, acclamations, shouts, rioting, and even murder, were part of a range of possible actions available to the plebs in their negotiations with more dominant players in the political game of control over the North African cities of late antiquity. While the bulk of the argument rests on a detailed analysis of Augustinian texts, mainly sermons, Magalhães is to be commended for his inclusion of archaeological evidence in his evocation of the people’s experiences. The result is a fascinating study of an understudied group, a true rarity in the field.

The book is divided into three parts. In the first part on “Constitutive Experiences of Plebeian Life,” Magalhães establishes the close links between plebeians, their working class status, and poverty. Magalhães argues that urban workers were mostly artisans and traders, members of collegia, and depicts African cities as dynamic centers of production. Through a well-illustrated study of archaeological remains, the author looks successively at Carthage, Timgad, Sabratha, Leptiminus, and Meninx, to show that cooperation prevailed over competition among artisans and workers, and that artisanal activities dictated the growth and fate of communities. Working class people tended to live in close quarters among their working places, while higher classes tended to live away from the densely occupied areas of city centers, which created “horizontal” links of solidarity among plebeians, the basis required for movements of solidarity to emerge. Scholae, taverns, streets, markets, baths, churches, and the harbor were important vehicles of political culture among the working classes and fostered such links of solidarity.

The second part focuses on the role of “Christian Plebians in Episcopal Elections” by investigating specific case studies and underlines “continuity in modes of popular intervention, which also reflects the permanence of a political tradition deployed in other circumstances of urban life” (159). The main novelty is the political importance of these elections. At Cirta at the beginning of the fourth century, the people thus supported the candidacy of a fellow citizen against the non-citizen Silvanus, who established a majority against his opponents’ exclusivism. For the author, this “slippage of the civic political framework into the [End Page 299] ecclesiastical cadre” (171) reflects a tension amongst the people of Cirta over privileges within the Christian community and the integration of newcomers and outsiders. This shows that their own political—rather than religious—principles mobilized the congregation, not powerful patrons. The plebs was also active in imposing its own ecclesiastical candidates. The opposite cases of Augustine’s election to the priesthood in 391 and the failed attempt at coopting Pinianus at Hippo in 411 expose that coordination and mastery of a common code of behavior were required for any popular action. Pinianus’s case is particularly instructive for the active role of the very poor. Throughout this tense event, Augustine’s flock used verbal attacks and threats of riot as tactics, examples of “attentive and theatrical attitudes that allowed plebeians to collectively negotiate the terms of a document” (203). The crisis of succession to Deuterius of Caesarea in 419 and Augustine’s nomination of...

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