Perpetua in the Amphitheater: Spatial Power, Colonial Archaeology, and Christian History

Abstract: The large, impressive, civic amphitheater of Roman Carthage is almost unanimously considered to be the space that hosted the martyrdom of Perpetua and her companions. Space has power in the way we tell stories, and to situate this story in this space gives a sense of grandeur and importance to a third-century execution. However, neither the textual nor the archaeological record make it clear that this story should be set in this amphitheater. Through an examination of the narratives in the Latin and Greek Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas , the Acts of Perpetua and Felicitas , and later martyrologies, this paper demonstrates that the municipal amphitheater was one of three options, along with a military amphitheater in Carthage and the amphitheater at Thuburbo Minus. The proposed site of Perpetua's execution oscillated between Carthage and Thuburbo throughout late antiquity, the middle ages, and into the modern period. The article argues that the association of Perpetua and the civic amphitheater was amplified in the early twentieth century when French colonial Christian archaeologists sought to find their Christian past in the ruins of Roman Carthage. Alfred-Louis Delattre (1850–1932) constructed a chapel to Perpetua beneath the amphitheater floor and hosted significant celebrations of the martyrdom on this site. In doing so, the physical ruins became a rhetorical space that affirmed colonial Christian ambitions. The rarely questioned location of the story in this amphitheater demonstrates a colonial and Christian heritage that continues to inform our reading of ancient literature.