Out of Order: The Circumcellions and Codex Theodosianus 16, 5, 52
Author: J. E. Atkinson
Source: Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, Vol. 41, No. 4 (1992), pp. 488-499

The Circumcellions were activists, linked, at least by Optatus and Saint Augustine, with the Donatists, mainly, if not exclusively, in Numidia, and attested from about A.D. 340. They were mentionedi n an anti-Donatist constitutionof A.D. 412. St Augustine in about 420 was pleased to record that Circumcellions were drifting away from the movement, and settling down to regularw ork as farm abourers, gut that may have just been wishful thinking, and there may still have been Circumcellions active after the Vandals won control of Numidia in 435. They were marked out for punishment again in a decree issued by Hunerici n February 484, but as the formulation matches that of the constitution of 412, the clause may be tralatician and may thus not attest that the Circumcellionsw ere still active.
They are described as being present on estates in turbae, which might suggestt hat they were migrant agricultural workers, like the harvesters known from an epitaph from Mactaris, with its reference to a falcifera turma. Augustine, however, says that they were not engaged in useful work, and that they were not on the land.

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