It has unfortunately become commonplace in Cyprianic studies, as exemplified by De Ste Croix and more recently Clarke, to regard his description of the workings of episcopal elections as purely rhetorical and not reflecting any real process of popular consultation. Cyprian's various words on this subject, describing a process requiring consent of the clergy and people following appropriate discussion and approval have been too often regarded as a rhetorical gloss on the requirement purely of an expression of acclamation at what bishops of a province have themselves decided regarding an episcopal appointment. Evers represents the growing challenge to such a received point of view, following on the work of Norton. Evers however is original in addressing the cultural and historical assumptions that have sustained such an interpretation: the historical account on which it is parasitic for its plausibility is of the decline of republican constitutional principles into mere rhetorical gestures in the face of the power of central imperial autocracy. Epigraphical and other evidence (such as the Theodosian Code) show that this was not the case in north Africa. The populus, who still participated in the dedication of public buildings, retained the capacity to intervene in the elections of new magistrates. Appointments to the council (ordo or curia) could be vetoed when they were announced in the popular assemblies. Curatores both widened their original function from that of centrally appointed auditors of municipal finances and were in fact from Constantine's time appointed from local curiales. These developments and much more indicate municipal constitutions that continued and even increased with real functions: descriptions of them were not mere rhetorical facades to conceal the operations of centralised imperial power. Anders appreciates that Cyprian's view of church order is shaped by his contemporary formation as rhetor and his knowledge of Roman constitutional forms. As such, his words on the role of plebs (a term in contrast to populus that he believes Cyprian prefers for the laity as a distinct part of a local ecclesial constitution in contrast to the clergy) can be taken at their face value of having the power of necessary consent in any episcopal appointment. Indeed, even if suffragium had come to mean ‘assent, approbation or applause’, Cyprian specifically uses the iudicium claimed for a neighbouring bishop of the plebs too in such expressions as plebis testimonio et iudicio. Optatus of Milevis is now considered and his evidence for Evers's thesis is adduced (the appendix to his book reveals the continuing secular constitutional dynamics witnessed in Cyprian's ecclesial parallels). Indeed he makes the telling point that if the requirements of the suffragium of the clergy and (local) people had been no more than a vacuous notion, he could not have used it with such cogent polemical effect against Donatist attacks on the validity of Caecilian's ordination by Felix of Aputhungi. Moving on to Augustine, Evers is able to use in support of his thesis not only examples of forced ordinations, such as Augustine's own, but subsequently that of Pinianus. Augustine's letter to Caelestine moreover congratulates him on his elevation to the See of Peter ‘sine plebis suae discissione’. Clearly the role of the plebs was therefore decisive and their acclamation not simply vacuous. Here Evers is also able to call in support the ‘new’ letter to Fabiola revealing the precise dynamics of the election of Antoninus and his subsequent deposition. Evers carefully documents the secular background, paralleling the dynamism of church order in Augustine from epigraphic sources, notably the album of Timgad (CIL viii.2403; 17903). Evers's considerable achievement, though building on the work of Norton and others, is not to be underestimated. He has grasped how Roman social and political order is reflected in Cyprian's view of church order so that he becomes an important historical source for determining the character of late antique Roman society. But he has continued to describe that reflection in Optatus and Augustine, in a most impressive study.