Harnessing Violence: Armed Force as Manpower in the Late Roman Countryside

Abstract

Brent Shaw’s monumental study invites reflection rather than critique. Proceeding from its demonstrations that Donatist violence was limited in scale, that Augustine’s extensive treatments of the movement have conditioned modern readers to see it as more violent and better organized than it was, and that the “circumcellions” were occasional agricultural laborers enlisted to bully sectarian opponents, this study explores Shaw’s findings on three fronts. First, it shows the relationship between Donatist sectarian violence and football hooliganism, both of which represent the expression of surplus male aggression in search of a cause. Second, it explores the relationship between violence and manual labor in an effort to rethink the dimensions of the problem. Finally, it situates the Donatist movement in a broader Mediterranean context by showing how it reflected a growing trend toward the breakdown of state authority in Late Antiquity.