Conflito familiar, vida urbana e estigmatização na África Proconsularis: o caso de Apuleio de Madaura (século II d.C.)

• Ano de defesa: 2015
• Autor(a) principal: Lima Neto, Belchior Monteiro
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: por
• Instituição de defesa: Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo; BR; Doutorado em História; UFES; Programa de Pós-Graduação em História
• Palavras-chave em Português: Tripolitaine; Apulée de Madaure; Stigmatisation; Honneur; Stigmatization; Honor; Africa Proconsularis; Tripolitânia; Apuleio de Madaura; Tripolitania; Apuleius Madaurensis; Estigmatização; Honra; África, Norte; Roma x História; História; 93/99
• Link de acesso: http://repositorio.ufes.br/handle/10/3558

In ancient roman society, marriage was a way to consolidate family alliances and often to serve political, economical and social conveniences, as in the case of the union between Apuleius and Aemilia Pudentilla, in the town of Oea. This matrimony allowed Pudentilla to benefit from the author’s amicitia with important personalities of the imperial society and thus gave her eldest son, Sicinius Pontianus, possibilities of social ascension. On the other hand, it represented a new paradigm of political and matrimonial relations in Oea and broke an ancestral alliance between two of the most important local families: the Aemilii and the Sicinii. As a consequence, part of the town’s elite opposed to the presence of Apuleius and scattered rumors that stigmatized him as a magus and a homo extrarius. That meant, after all, an intent to degrade the author’s honor before public opinion of Oea. In this context, Apuleius was judged for crimen magiae by the court of Proconsular Africa governor, based in the basilica of the neighboring city of Sabratha. Despite the risk of capital punishment, Apuleius saw his own judgment as a public arena to absolve his honor, since his defense speech in the basilica of Sabratha could influence those who took him for a sorcerer. For this purpose, Apuleius based his speech on a logic of identity construction and bet on a rhetoric of differentiation. The author distinguished himself of his adversaries by making a very high representation of himself, as a platonic philosopher in possession of paideia, and at the same time portrayed his accusers as ignorant and primitive, i.e. incapable of telling the difference between philosophers and sorcerers. This strategy was successful and a proof of this is the public recognition obtained by Apuleius in Carthage, where the author became a famous public speaker and magistrate and a statue was erected in homage to him. In our perception, the stigmatization of Apuleius and the subsequent recovery of his honor show how different representations can be built according to the way in which social groups produce their own interpretations of the world – often competing and differentiated. To sum up, the problems analyzed in this thesis clarify the multiple processes by which identities are differently defined.