Vos ante paucos annos pagani eratis, modo christiani estis, parentes vestri daemoniis serviebant: l’homélie d’Augustin adressée aux habi-tants de Thignica dans l’hiver 403-404 et leur conversion tardive au christianisme, en pensant au massacre de Sufes

Sermon 159 / B, recently included in the Opera omnia agostiniana collection, delivered at Tignica in the winter of 403-404 by Augustine (commenting on Paul's epistle to Romans 11 and two Psalms) perhaps contains a trace of the conversion late to the Christianity of the faithful present in the municipium Septimium Aurelium Antoninianum Herculeum Frugiferum Thignica, which was a very lively pagan religious center (now researches INP Tunis and University of Sas- sari). Augustine's sermon retains traces of real experience: the many references to the difficulty of travel, his listeners who had been pagans, their parents who had worshiped the daemones (pagan deities), the presence of heretics among the citizens in the edge of the old territory of the colony of Carthage: we know the mantenat of the activity of the fiamines perpetui in the municipal senate still in the first decade of the 5th century AD, the year after the visit of the Bishop of Hippo. There is the problem of the Christian basilica, before the construction of the Byzantine fortress. The few Christian inscriptions (12) and the theological content of the homily are also presented.