The “Africanness” of Augustine is a case made from deep reading and an imaginative instinct for the sources, pointing to the unusual survival of Punic alongside Roman throughout North Africa; and the unique dynamics of the African Church, with its distinctive customs and Donatist schisms. Rather than falling into the trap of treating Roman Africa as a subaltern identity, [author Catherine] Conybeare paints a persuasive portrait of a provincial identity, closely linked to a hyperlocal patria of home town and patronage networks.The book under review is Augustine the African (Blackstone, 2025).Africa, in the context of the book, means the Roman province, which encompassed the former African possessions of its one-time rival city state, the Phoenician colony of Carthage. This included much of modern Tunisia and parts of modern Algeria and Libya. The inhabitants were diverse, including Phoenician, Greek and Roman settlers, but also what we would call an indigenous population of Berbers, who in Augustine’s time spoke the Punic language brought by the Carthaginians. Augustine himself was born to a Roman father and a Berber mother, and he would have spoken Punic as well as Latin.
Cross-file under Punic Watch.
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