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Exilium Romanum: exile, politics and personal experience from 58 BC to AD 68

Exilium Romanum: exile, politics and personal experience from 58 BC to AD 68

By Neil Raj Singh-Masuda

PhD Dissertation, University of Warwick, 1996

Seneca

Abstract: This thesis investigates the sentence of exile in Rome from the years 58 BC to AD 68. Its central argument is that exile increased in severity from the end of the Republic until it had been turned into a despotic tool at the end of the Julio-Claudian Dynasty. The thesis also aims to convey diachronically the sense of exile through an analysis of its experiential effect on those who suffered banishment from Rome, while taking account of legal changes and explaining the various forms of exile, aquae et ignis interdictio, relegatio and deportatio. Primary sources referred to include the exilic works of Cicero, Ovid and Seneca, the historical texts of Tacitus, Suetonius and Cassius Dio, as well as a wide range of other ancient writers. Additional research methods include the use of epigraphic and material evidence. A full bibliography of secondary sources and appendices on key moments and places of exile are included.



Introduction: “An exile is someone who inhabits one place and remembers or projects the reality of another.” Exiles were commonplace during the time of Aristides the Just in Greece in the fifth century BC and they remain a commonplace in the age of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in late-twentieth century Haiti: the range of exilic characters varies from Daedalus of Athens to Dedalus of Dublin. Exile is a condition capable of arousing great emotion, not only in the person who suffers it but in its secondary victims, those who have been left at “home”. Throughout the centuries, it has produced a state of despair and gloom, through which the only flickering glimmer of light is the hope that the banished person might one day be able to return to his native land. In Roman history, the subject of exile has generally been afforded a supporting role, rather than dominating the stage, and yet its appearances have been frequent: from the mythical expulsion of Rome’s last king to Tillius Cimber’s petition seeking his brother’s recall from exile, which delayed Julius Caesar and led to his assassination, from Lucretius’ dedication of his great work to a Republican exile to the Shakespearian mention of Ovid in his tragic place of banishment, where, in As You Like It, Touchstone punningly replies to Audrey: “I am here with thee and thy goats, as the most capricious poet, honest Ovid, was among the Goths” (Act 3, Scene 3). Exile played a key role in shaping Roman politics and society during the late Republic and the early principate, yet the change in its implementation reflected the radical change in Rome’s system of government, from consensus to autocratic rule. By their very attitude towards exile, the Romans strongly declared their own sense of identity and belonging. The sense of exclusion is so profound that the former Roman citizen has far less acceptance in both metaphorical and literal terms than the foreigner by birth. Exile places a person in a state of un-Romaimess. There is a vast difference, however, between the use of voluntary exile during the Republic and the harsher sentence of exile during the principate.

Click here to read this thesis from the University of Warwick

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