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The city of Caesarea of Mauretania and its vicinity offer an exceptional variety of sources for understanding 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, these inscriptions have been understood as testimonies of the desecration of pagan temples. More probably, the statues came from buildings left in ruins after the sack of the city by the Berber prince Firmus. Moving them was, therefore, rather a way of restoring the most frequented parts of the city quickly and inexpensively.  It reflects how prominent the statues remained for the municipal authorities in the late fourth century. In the early fifth century, however, two Passions devoted to Salsa of Tipasa and Marciana of Caesarea (probably composed by the same hagiographer living in Caesarea or the surrounding neighborhood) spread among Christians a discourse of legitimization of individual violence against pagan statues, even though such attitudes were condemned by conciliar decisions of the Church of Spain and Africa, or forbidden by imperial laws. The aim of the hagiographer was probably to push the ecclesiastical and civic authorities to act against pagan idols. Finally, archeological evidence provides proof 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 carried out under the control of civilian authorities, under pressure from a section of the Christian community. All of these documents testify to the debates and controversies that arose regarding pagan statues in late antiquity, illustrating how there could be consensus, but also the multiple forms of pressure exerted by some uncompromising Christians in order to ensure their mutilation or disappearance.