Since the suicides or, better, the self-killings by the dissident Christians, especially the “circumcellions,” were reputed to have been widespread and terrifying in effect, it would nice to be able to find some evidence of them in the material record – some hard “on the ground” data relative to the practice. This turns out to be a version of the parallel problem of attempting to find any material evidence, either in the archaeological record or in epigraphy, relevant to either the circumcellions or the agonistici. Since the self-killers were regarded, and worshiped, as martyrs, such memorials must have existed. The memorial to the dissident martyr Marculus could be argued to be a variant of this kind of material memory, but the nature of his death, and the fact that one is speaking of a record at Vegesala, the site of his bishopric and not at Nova Petra, the site of his death, means that we do not have any direct evidence of a suicidal death.

The problem is that it is precisely the connected meaning between their life and death and our evaluation of it, namely as “suicide,” that is lost in the commemoration. Such deaths would be those of martyrs and would be celebrated as such – as those of any martyr (like Marculus, for example). If they exist, they are not distinguishable from the rest. Unfortunately, there is no identifiable material evidence of these suicides or of their celebration or memorialization.