ABSTRACT
It is the nature of accounts of martyrs that they close with finality. The stories inevitably end with the death into eternal life of the martyrs. For the recorder of these events, nothing more needed to be said, indeed could be said. Of course, in this world things do not end so definitively. Life does go on, but it proceeds shaped in some way by the events that have taken place. Although it is impossible (even undesirable) in this short space to give a full history of the development of the Christian communities in Roman North Africa, I nevertheless want to point to some of the developments that occurred and perhaps were shaped by the martyrdom of the small group in Carthage. In this way, I will avoid the easier path of closing with the death of the martyr in favor of the more realistic one of trying to show how life does go on.
