exile
exile (Lat. ex[s]ilium)
Involuntary exclusion from, or confinement to, a particular place was a common political and criminal penalty in the Roman Empire. The severer form, deportation (deportatio, interdictio aqua et igni), was assimilated with death as a ‘capital’ penalty (Digest, XLVIII, 1, 2), in that it was permanent and involved loss of civil rights and confiscation of property. Relegation (relegatio), by contrast, might be temporary and avoid such disabilities. A paterfamilias could relegate his wife or children and a patron his freedmen. Magistrates might decree the expulsion of entire classes of people, as when ‘foreigners’ (peregrini) were expelled from the City of Rome due to a food shortage in 383/4 (Ammianus, XIV, 6, 19).
High-status offenders were exiled in circumstances in which their inferiors were more usually executed or condemned to the mines. Constantine I’s banishment of Arius and two bishops deposed by the Council of Nicaea set a precedent for imperial involvement in ecclesiastical discipline, while Magnus Maximus’ execution of Priscillian of Avila attracted the stigma of persecution and was not repeated. Athanasius of Alexandria was exiled five times, yet died in his see, while John Chrysostom’s opposition to the Empress Eudoxia precipitated his death at Comana of Cappadocia as he went to his second exile in the Caucasus.
P. Garnsey, Social Status and Legal Privilege in the Roman Empire (1970), 111–22.Find this resource:
I. Milewski, ‘Miejsca zsyłek biskupów wschodniorzymskich w IV i V wieku’, Vox Patrum 19 (1999), 367–85.Find this resource:
D. A. Washburn, Banishment in the Later Roman Empire, 284–476 ce (2013).Find this resource:
