Where Are the Names of the Iovii and Herculii? Exploring Christian Responses to Tetrarchic Material Culture

Abstract:This essay explores the relationship between traditional and Christian concepts of imperial failure and disgrace. Using the writings of Eusebius and Lactantius as a springboard, I discuss the significance of the idea that emperors suffered body, image, and name destruction as a consequence of persecuting the Christians. This is then related to a body of epigraphic evidence in North Africa from the time of the first tetrarchy, where numerous examples of the erasure of imperial names have led to suggestions that these are the result of "Christians" targeting their persecutors. This essay evaluates the likelihood of this and considers it in relation to the ways in which the memory of the Great Persecution was cultivated in this region. Through a close analysis of the context of some of these erasures, I argue that they should not be seen as random acts of religious extremism but as part of the careful management of urban spaces by municipal elites in this period. The ambiguity of these modifications left it unclear whether the stigmatization of imperial names was due to the political or religious failure of these emperors, thus merging the two meanings. This was advantageous, since the traditional practice of name-erasure could be interpreted in different ways depending on the values of the viewer and thus represented common ground between different groups.