EXILE, banishment from one's native country by the sovereign authority. In a general sense exile is applied to pro longed absence from one's country either through force of cir cumstances or when undergone voluntarily. Among the Greeks, in the Homeric age, banishment (4n, yi) was sometimes inflicted as a punishment by the authorities for crimes affecting the gen eral interests, but is chiefly known in connection with cases of homicide. With these the State had nothing to do; the punish ment of the murderer was the duty and privilege of the relatives of the murdered man. Unless the relatives could be induced to accept a money payment by way of compensation (rocvi, were geld; see especially Homer, Iliad, xviii. 497), in which case the murderer was allowed to remain in the country, his only means of escaping punishment was flight to a foreign land. If during his self-imposed exile, the relatives expressed their willingness to accept the indemnity, he was at liberty to return and resume his position in society.
In later times banishment is (1) a legal punishment for par ticular offences; (2) voluntary.
I. Banishment for life with confiscation of property was in flicted upon those who destroyed or uprooted the sacred olives at Athens; upon those who remained neutral during a sedition (by a law of Solon which subsequently fell into abeyance) ; upon those who gave refuge to or received on board ship a man who had fled to avoid punishment ; upon those who wounded with intent to kill and those who prompted them to such an act (it is uncertain whether in this case exile was for life or temporary) ; upon anyone who wilfully murdered an alien; for impiety. Cer tain political crimes were also similarly punished—treason, laco nism, sycophancy (see SYCOPHANT), attempts to subvert existing decrees. For the peculiar form of banishment called OSTRACISM, see separate article.
2. Citizens sometimes voluntarily left the country for other reasons (debt, inability to pay a fine). Since extradition was only demanded in cases of high treason or other serious offences against the State, the fugitive was not interfered with. He was at liberty to return of ter a certain time had elapsed.
Little is known about exile as it affected Sparta and other Greek towns, but it is probable that the same conditions prevailed as at Athens.
At Rome, in early times, exile was not a punishment, but rather a means of escaping punishment. Before judgment had been finally pronounced it was open to any Roman citizen con demned to death to escape the penalty by voluntary exile (solum vertere exsilii causa). To prevent his return, he was interdicted from the use of fire and water; if he broke the interdict and re turned, anyone had the right to put him to death. The aquae et ignis (to which et tecti "shelter" is sometimes added) interdictio is variously explained as exclusion from the necessaries of life, from the symbols of civic communion, or from "the marks of a pure society, which the criminal would defile by his further use of them." Subsequently (probably at the time of the Gracchi) it became a recognized legal penalty, practically equivalent to "exile," taking the place of capital punishment. The criminal was permitted to withdraw from the city after sentence was pro nounced ; but in order that this withdrawal might as far as possi ble bear the character of a punishment, his departure was sanc tioned by a decree of the people which declared his exile perma nent. Authorities are not agreed whether this exile by interdiction entailed loss of civitas; according to some this did not ensue until (as in earlier times) the criminal had assumed the citizenship of the State in which he had taken refuge and thereby lost his rights as a citizen of Rome, while others hold that it was not until the time of Tiberius (A.D. 23) that capitis deminutio media became the direct consequence of trial and conviction. Interdictio was the punishment for treason, murder, arson and other serious offences which came under the cognizance of the quaestiones perpetuae (permanent judicial commissions for certain offences) ; confiscation of property was only inflicted in extreme cases.
Under the Empire interdictio gradually fell into disuse and a new form of banishment, introduced by Augustus, called depor tatio, generally in insulam, took its place. For some time the two probably existed side by side. Deportatio consisted in transpor tation for life to an island (or some place prescribed on the main land, not of Italy), accompanied by loss of civitas and all civil rights, and confiscation of property. The most dreaded places of exile were the islands of Gyarus, Sardinia, an oasis in the desert (quasi in insulam) of Libya; Crete, Cyprus and Rhodes were considered more tolerable. Large bodies of persons were also transported in this manner; thus Tiberius sent 4,00o freedmen to Sardinia for Jewish or Egyptian superstitious practices. Depor tatio was originally inflicted upon political criminals, but in course of time became more particularly a means of removing those whose wealth and popularity rendered them objects of suspicion. It was also a punishment for the following offences: adultery, murder, poisoning, forgery, embezzlement, sacrilege and certain cases of immorality.
Relegatio was a milder form of deportatio. It either excluded the person banished from one specified district only, with per mission to choose a residence elsewhere, or the place of exile was fixed. Relegatio could be either temporary or for life, but it did not in either case carry with it loss of civitas or property, nor was the exile under military surveillance, as in the case of de portatio. Thus, Ovid, when in exile at Tomi, says (Tristia, v. xi.) : "he, i.e., the emperor, has not deprived me of life, nor of wealth, nor of the rights of a citizen . . . he has simply ordered me to leave my home." He calls himself relegates, not exsul.
In later writers the word exsilium is used in the sense of all its three forms—aquae et ignis interdictio, deportatio and relegatio.
See ALIEN ; DEPORTATION ; EXPATRIATION ; EXPULSION.