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La cité de Caesarea de Maurétanie et ses environs offrent une diversité de sources exceptionnelle pour comprendre le sort qui fut réservé aux statues des dieux païens dans l’Antiquité tardive. Une série de quatre bases de statues qui portent des inscriptions tardives mentionnant leur transfert depuis des lieux sordides, témoignent de l’intérêt que les autorités municipales portaient encore aux statues à la fin du iv e  siècle. Au début du v e  siècle néanmoins, deux Passions consacrées à Salsa de Tipasa et Marciana de Césarée, probablement composées par un même hagiographe habitant la région de Caesarea, diffusent auprès des fidèles un discours de légitimation de la violence individuelle contre les statues païennes, à rebours des positions adoptées par l’Église d’Afrique et la législation impériale. La documentation archéologique, enfin, fournit des témoignages difficiles à analyser de mutilations de statues, dont certaines au moins furent probablement effectuées sous le contrôle des autorités civiles, sous la pression d’une partie de la communauté chrétienne. L’ensemble de ces documents témoignent des débats et des polémiques au centre desquels se sont retrouvées les statues des dieux païens à la fin de l’Antiquité. Ils illustrent le consensus qu’elles pouvaient susciter auprès de certaines élites païennes et chrétiennes, mais aussi les multiples pressions exercées par des chrétiens plus radicaux pour obtenir leur mutilation ou leur disparition.

Smash or preserve the pagan idols? The fate of divine statues in Caesarea (Cherchel, Algeria) at the end of Antiquity The city of Caesarea of Mauretania and its vicinity offer an exceptional variety of sources in order to understand the fate of pagan statues in Late Antiquity. Four statue bases found in the western baths carry dedications indicating their transfer from squalid places (de sordentibus locis). Most of the time, those inscriptions have been understood as testimonies of the desecration of the pagan temples. More probably, the statues came from buildings in ruins after the sack of the city by the Berber prince Firmus. Their moving was therefore rather a way to restore quickly and inexpensively the most frequently places of the city. It reflects how prominent the statues remain for the municipal authorities in the late 4th century. In the early 5th c., however, two Passions devoted to Salsa of Tipasa and Marciana of Caesarea, probably composed by the same hagiographer living in Caesarea or the neighbourhood, spread among the Christians a discourse of legitimization of individual violence against the pagan statues, even if such attitude was condemned by conciliar decisions of the Church of Spain and Africa, or forbid by imperial laws. The aim of the hagiographer was probably to push the ecclesiastical and civic authorities to act against the pagan idols. Archaeological evidences finally provide testimonies of mutilations, like decapitation or defacement. Thus, a statue of Bacchus seems to have been hammered: the eyes, the nose, the mouth and the chin have been mutilated. The shape of this mutilation recalls the manifestations of the abolitio memoriae, and it is probable that Christians reinterpreted this traditional process of condemnation of memory. This type of mutilation was most probably made under the control of civilian authorities, under pressure of a part of the Christian community. All these documents show debates and controversies that rose about the pagan statues in Late Antiquity, illustrating how they could be a consensus but also the multiple pressures made by some uncompromising Christians to get their mutilation or their disappearance.