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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. euro75.00.
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...