30 Exile

FROM ROMAN TO UNROMAN

There were a number of ways you could become unRoman in a rather rapid manner. One was to be captured and enslaved; when that happened Roman law considered you dead, and only brought you back to life from a legal perspective once you were freed, which must have made things very interesting all round if you managed to get free at some point. We’re not looking at those cases, however, but at those of exiles and Romans, like Sertorius, who decided to toss aside their Romanness.

EXILE

Exiles, both enforced and self-willed, form an interesting subset of Romans. Romans who were legally exiled^[1] lost all their civic rights and ceased for all intents and purposes to be Roman in the eyes of the state.

Men who are on trial for their lives at Rome, while sentence is in process of being voted,—if even only one of the tribes whose votes are needed to ratify the sentence has not voted,—have the privilege at Rome of openly departing and condemning themselves to a voluntary exile. Such men are safe at Naples or Praeneste or at Tibur, and at other towns with which this arrangement has been duly ratified on oath.

Polybius, Histories 6.14

For as to banishment, it is very easy to be understood what sort of thing that is. For banishment is not a punishment, but is a refuge and harbour of safety from punishment. For those who are desirous to avoid some punishment or some calamity, turn to banishment alone,— that is to say, they change their residence and their situation, and, therefore, there will not be found in any law of ours, as there is in the laws of other states, any mention of any crime being punished with banishment. But as men wished to avoid imprisonment, execution, or disgrace (ignominia), which are penalties, appointed by the laws, they flee to banishment as to an altar, though, if they chose to remain in the city and to submit to the rigour of the law, they would not lose their rights of citizenship sooner than they lost their lives; but because they do not so choose, their rights of citizenship are not taken from them, but are abandoned and laid aside by them. For as, according to our law, no one can be a citizen of two cities, the rights of citizenship here are lost when he who has fled is received into banishment,—that is to say, into another city.

Cicero, In Defense of Caecina

There seems to have been forms of exile that didn’t involve actual movement from Rome, but many exiles were forbidden to come within hundreds of miles of the city under penalty of death for them and any who aided them. Some were even exiled to specific (usually horrible) places as a special twist of the knife. A manly, traditional Roman was supposed to take this sort of thing in his stride and endure it with stoic grimness, or to kill himself if he could not manage that. Cicero was not such a man, and he had a total breakdown when his enemy Clodius managed to have him exiled in 57 BCE, as the following letter to his wife Terentia, his daughter Tullia/”Tulliola”, and son written as he was about to leave Italy shows:

TO TERENTIA, TULLIOLA, AND YOUNG CICERO (AT ROME)
BRUNDISIUM, 29 APRIL

Yes, I do write to you less often than I could because, though I am always wretched, yet when I write to you or read a letter from you, I am in such floods of tears that I cannot endure it. Oh, that I had clung less to life! I should at least never have known real sorrow, or not much of it, in my life. Yet if fortune has reserved for me any hope of recovering at any time any position again, I was not utterly wrong to do so: if these miseries are to be permanent, I only wish, my dear, to see you as soon as possible and to die in your arms, since neither gods, whom you have worshipped with such pure devotion, nor men, whom I have ever served, have made us any return… What a fall! What a disaster! What can I say? Should I ask you to come—a woman of weak health and broken spirit? Should I not ask you? Am I to be without you, then? I think the best course is this: if there is any hope of my restoration, stay to promote it and push the thing on: but if, as I fear, it proves hopeless, pray come to me by any means in your power.^[2] Be sure of this, that if I have you I shall not think myself wholly lost. But what is to become of my darling Tullia? You must see to that now: I can think of nothing. But certainly, however things turn out, we must do everything to promote that poor little girl’s married happiness and reputation. Again, what is my boy Cicero to do? Let him, at any rate, be ever in my bosom and in my arms. I can’t write more. A fit of weeping hinders me. I don’t know how you have got on; whether you are left in possession of anything, or have been, as I fear, entirely plundered. Piso,^[3] as you say, I hope will always be our friend. As to the manumission of the slaves you need not be uneasy. To begin with, the promise made to yours was that you would treat them according as each severally deserved. So far Orpheus has behaved well, besides him no one very especially so. With the rest of the slaves the arrangement is that, if my property is forfeited,^[4] they should become my freedmen, supposing them to be able to maintain at law that status. But if my property remained in my ownership, they were to continue slaves, with the exception of a very few. But these are trifles. To return to your advice, that I should keep up my courage and not give up hope of recovering my position, I only wish that there were any good grounds for entertaining such a hope. As it is, when, alas ! shall I get a letter from you? Who will bring it me? I would have waited for it at Brundisium, but the sailors would not allow it, being unwilling to lose a favourable wind. For the rest, put as dignified a face on the matter as you can, my dear Terentia. Our life is over: we have had our day: it is not any fault of ours that has ruined us, but our virtue. I have made no false step, except in not losing my life when I lost my honours. But since our children preferred my living, let us bear every-thing else, however intolerable. And yet I, who encourage you, cannot encourage myself. I have sent that faithful fellow Clodius Philhetaerus home, because he was hampered with weakness of the eyes. Sallustius seems likely to outdo everybody in his attentions. Pescennius is exceedingly kind to me; and I have hopes that he will always be attentive to you. Sica had said that he would accompany me; but he has left Brundisium. Take the greatest possible care of your health, and believe me that I am more affected by your distress than my own. My dear Terentia, most faithful and best of wives, and my darling little daughter, and that last hope of my race, Cicero, good-bye!

29 April, from Brundisium.

Cicero, Letters to his Family 14.4

For good measure, he also wrote to his brother Quintus to weep at him too:

TO HIS BROTHER QUINTUS (AT ROME), from THESSALONICA, AUGUST

I beg you, my dear brother, if you and all my family have been ruined by my single misfortune, not to attribute it to dishonesty and bad conduct on my part, rather than to shortsightedness and the wretched state I was in. I have committed no fault except in trusting those whom I believed to be bound by the most sacred obligation not to deceive me, or whom I thought to be even interested in not doing so. All my most intimate, nearest and dearest friends were either alarmed for themselves or jealous of me: the result was that all I lacked was good faith on the part of my friends and caution on my own. But if your own blameless character and the compassion of the world prove sufficient to preserve you at this juncture from molestation, you can, of course, observe whether any hope of restoration is left for me. For Pomponius, Sestius, and my son-in-law Piso have caused me as yet to stay at Thessalonica, forbidding me, on account of certain impending movements, to increase my distance. But in truth I am awaiting the result more on account of their letters than from any firm hope of my own. For what can I hope with an enemy possessed of the most formidable power, with my detractors masters of the state, with friends unfaithful, with numbers of people jealous?… [And so on and on]

Letters to his Brother 1.4

It was not just men who were exiled. Augustus exiled his daughter and granddaughter, both called Julia, due to a range of offenses, all of which challenged his moral agenda:

65 1 But at the height of [Augustus’] happiness and his confidence in his family and its training, Fortune proved fickle. He found the two Julias, his daughter and granddaughter, guilty of every form of vice, and banished them. He lost Gaius and Lucius within the span of eighteen months, for the former died in Lycia and the latter at Massilia. He then publicly adopted his third grandson Agrippa and at the same time his stepson Tiberius by a bill passed in the assembly of the curiae; but he soon disowned Agrippa because of his low tastes and violent temper, and sent him off to Surrentum. 2 He endured the death of his family with far more resignation than their misconduct. For he was not greatly broken by the fate of Gaius and Lucius, but he informed the senate of his daughter’s fall through a letter read in his absence by a quaestor, and out of shame would meet no one for a long time, and even thought of putting her to death. At all events, when one of her confidantes, a freedwoman called Phoebe, hanged herself at about that same time, he said: “I would rather have been Phoebe’s father.” 3 After Julia was banished, he denied her the use of wine and every form of luxury, and would not allow any man, bond or free, to come near her without his permission, and then not without being informed of his stature, complexion, and even of any marks or scars upon his body. It was not until five years later that he moved her from the island to the mainland and treated her with somewhat less rigour. But he could not by any means be prevailed on to recall her, and when the Roman people several times interceded for her and urgently pressed their suit, he in open assembly called upon the gods to curse them with like daughters and like wives. 4 He would not allow the child born to his granddaughter Julia after her sentence to be recognized or reared. As Agrippa grew no more manageable, but on the contrary became madder from day to day, he transferred him to an island and set a guard of soldiers over him besides. He also provided by a decree of the senate that he should be confined there for all time, and at every mention of him and of the Julias he would sigh deeply and even cry out: “I wish never had married and I wish had died without offspring” and he never alluded to them except as his three boils and his three ulcers.

Suetonius, Life of Augustus 65

SELF EXILE

Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi brothers—two famous Roman tribunes of the plebs in the late 2nd century BCE — decided to exile herself from Rome after her sons were lynched by opposing factions in the Senate. In doing so, she shows how self-exile — making oneself unRoman to some degree — could be effective.

Cornelia is said to have endured these and all her misfortunes nobly and unselfishly, and to have said about the shrines where they were buried that their bodies had received worthy tombs. She herself spent her days in the area called Misenum and did not change her usual way of life. She had many friends and entertained her friends, and there were always Greeks and learned men in her company, and all the kings exchanged gifts with her. She particularly enjoyed discussing with visitors and friends the life and habits of her father Scipio Africanus, and she was most admirable because she did not grieve for her sons and talked to her audience without weeping about their sufferings and their accomplishments, as if she were telling stories to them about the ancient heroes of Rome.  Some thought that she had lost her mind because she was old and had suffered so greatly, and that she had become insensible because of her misfortunes, but these people were themselves insensible of how much nobility and good birth and education can help people in times of sorrow, and that for all the attempts of virtue to prevent it, she may be overcome by fortune, but in her defeat she cannot be deprived of the power of rational endurance.

Plutarch, Life of Gaius Gracchus 19.1-3

In contrast to Cornelia, we have the Roman general and ex-consul Lucullus (118-c. 57 BCE). Lucullus — who had had a spectacular political and military career, only to be gradually pushed aside by new rising competitors such as Pompey — went off to the countryside of southern Italy in an act of “self-exile.” There, he became very interested in raising fish and living a lavishly enjoyable lifestyle, rather than fighting for Roman values and acting as a Roman elite male was supposed to. He spent little time in Rome, and preferred his many villas near Naples, then a favourite spot for the Roman elite to spend their summers.

38 1 After his divorce from Clodia, who was a immoral and base woman, he married Servilia, a sister of Cato,^[5] but this, too, was an unfortunate marriage. For it lacked none of the evils which Clodia had brought in her train except one, namely, the scandal about her brothers. In all other respects Servilia was equally vile and abandoned, and yet Lucullus forced himself to tolerate her, out of regard for Cato. At last, however, he divorced her. 2 The Senate had conceived wondrous hopes that in him it would find an opposer of the tyranny of Pompey and a champion of the aristocracy, with all the advantage of great glory and influence, but he quit and abandoned public affairs, either because he saw that they were already beyond proper control and diseased, or, as some say, because he had his fill of glory, and felt that the unfortunate result of his many struggles and toils entitled him to fall back upon a life of ease and luxury. 3 Some commend him for making such a change, and thereby escaping the unhappy lot of Marius,^[6] who, after his Cimbrian victories and the large and wonderful successes which were so famous, was unwilling to relax his efforts and enjoy the honours won, but with an insatiable desire for glory and power, old man that he was, fought with young men in the conduct of the state, and so drove headlong into terrible deeds, and sufferings still more terrible still. Cicero, say these, would have had a better old age if he had retreated from public life after the affair of Catiline, and Scipio, too, if he had taken a pause after adding Numantia to Carthage; 4 for a political cycle, too, has a sort of natural termination, and political no less than athletic contests are absurd, after the full vigour of life has departed. Crassus and Pompey, on the other hand, ridiculed Lucullus for giving himself up to pleasure and extravagance, as if a luxurious life were not even more unsuitable to men of his years than political and military activities.

39 1 And it is true that in the life of Lucullus, as in an ancient comedy, one reads in the first part of political measures and military commands, and in the latter part of drinking bouts, and banquets, and what might pass for mad parties, and torch-races, and all manner of frivolity. 2 For I must count as frivolity his costly buildings, his walkways and baths, and still more his paintings and statues (not to speak of his devotion to these arts), which he collected at enormous expense, pouring out into such channels the vast and splendid wealth which he accumulated from his campaigns.^[7] Even now, when luxury has increased so much, the gardens of Lucullus are counted among the most costly of the imperial gardens. 3 As for his works on the sea-shore and in the vicinity of Naples where he suspended hills over vast tunnels, girdled his residences with zones of sea and with streams for the breeding of fish, and built dwellings in the sea, — when Tubero the Stoic saw them, he called him Xerxes in a toga. 4 He had also country villas near Tusculum, with observatories, and extensive open banqueting halls and porticos. Pompey once visited these, and chided Lucullus because he had arranged his country residence in the best possible way for summer, but had made it uninhabitable in winter. Whereupon Lucullus burst out laughing and said: “Do you suppose, then, that I have less sense than cranes and storks, and do not change residences according to the seasons?” 5 A praetor was once making ambitious plans for a public spectacle, and asked him for some purple cloaks for the adornment of a chorus.^[8] Lucullus replied that he would investigate, and if he had any, would give them to him. The next day he asked the praetor how many he wanted, and on his replying that a hundred would be enough, told him take twice that number. The poet Flaccus alluded to this when he said that he did not regard a house as wealthy in which the treasures that were overlooked and unobserved were not more than those which met the eye.

40 1 The daily meals of Lucullus were such as the newly rich have. Not only with his dyed coverlets, beakers set with precious stones, and choruses and dramatic recitations, but also with his arrays of all sorts of meats and daintily prepared dishes, did he make himself the envy of the vulgar. 2 A saying of Pompey’s, when he was ill, was certainly very popular. His physicians had prescribed a thrush for him to eat, and his servants said that a thrush could not be found anywhere in the summer season except where Lucullus kept them fattening.

…

40 3 While this matter was much talked of in the city, as was natural, Cicero and Pompey came up to him as he was idling in the forum. Cicero was one of his most intimate friends, and although the matter of the command of the army had led to some coolness between him and Pompey, still they were accustomed to frequent and friendly meetings and conversation with one another. 4 Accordingly, Cicero saluted him, and asked how he was disposed towards receiving a petition. “Most excellently well,” said Lucullus, and invited them to make their petition. “We desire,” said Cicero, “to dine with you to‑day just as you would have dined by yourself.” Lucullus demurred to this, and begged the privilege of selecting a later day, but they refused to allow it, nor would they suffer him to confer with his servants, that he might not order any thing more provided than what was provided for himself. 5 Thus much, however, and no more, they did allow him at his request, namely, to tell one of his slaves in their presence that he would dine that day in the Apollo. Now this was the name of one of his costly apartments, and he thus outwitted the men without their knowing it. For each of his dining-rooms, as it seems, had a fixed allowance for the dinner served there, as well as its own special apparatus and equipment, so that his slaves, on hearing where he wished to dine, knew just how much the dinner was to cost, and what were to be its decorations and arrangements. Now the usual cost of a dinner in the Apollo was fifty thousand drachmas, and that was the sum laid out on the present occasion. 6 Pompey was amazed at the speed with which the banquet was prepared, notwithstanding it had cost so much. In these ways, then, Lucullus threw his money around, as though it were in very truth a barbarian prisoner-of‑war.

Plutarch, Life of Lucullus

Others chose to make themselves unRoman in more dramatic ways, and in ones that caused far, far more problems for the Roman state. One such person was Quintus Sertorius (c. 127-73 BCE), who in the first century BCE decided to embrace a role as a Spanish ruler after ending up on the losing side of a civil war in Rome between the generals Gaius Marius and Lucius Cornelius Sulla in the 80s BCE:

2 1 Quintus Sertorius belonged to a family of some prominence in Nursia, a Sabine city. Having lost his father, he was reared properly by his mother, of whom he appears to have been excessively fond. His mother’s name, we are told, was Rhea. As a result of his training he was sufficiently knowledgeable about legal procedure, and acquired some influence also at Rome from his eloquence, although he was only a youth; but his brilliant successes in war turned his ambition towards that…. 3 1 To begin with, he served under Caepio when the Cimbri and Teutones invaded Gaul, and after the Romans had been defeated and fled, though he lost his horse and had been wounded in the body he swam across the Rhone, shield and breastplate and all, against a strongly opposing current, so sturdy was his body and so hardened against hardships by training. 2 Then, when the same enemies were coming up with many thousands of men and dreadful threats, so that for a Roman even to hold his post at such a time and obey his general was a great feat, while Marius was in command Sertorius undertook to spy out the enemy. So, putting on Celtic dress and acquiring basic expressions in that language for any necessary conversation, he mingled with the barbarians, and after he saw and heard what was important, he came back to Marius. 3 At the time, then, he received a prize for courage; and since, during the rest of the campaign, he performed many deeds which showed both judgement and daring, he was promoted by his general to positions of honour and trust. After the war with the Cimbri and Teutones, he was sent out as military tribune by Didius the praetor to Spain, and spent the winter in Castulo, a city of the Celtiberians. 4 Here the soldiers shook off all discipline in the midst of plenty, and were drunk most of the time, so that the barbarians despised them. One night they sent for aid from their neighbours, the Oritanians, attacked the Romans in their quarters and began to kill them. But Sertorius slipped out with a few others, and assembled the soldiers who were making their escape, and surrounded the city. He found the gate by which the barbarians had stolen in, but did not repeat their mistake; instead, he set a guard there, and then, taking possession of all quarters of the city, slew all the men who were of age to bear arms. 5 Then, when the slaughter was ended, he ordered all his soldiers to lay aside their own armour and clothing, to array themselves in those of the Barbarians, and then to follow him to the city from which the men came who had fallen upon them in the night. Having thus deceived the Barbarians by means of the armour which they saw, he found the gate of the city open, and caught a multitude of men who supposed they were coming forth to meet a successful party of friends and fellow citizens. Therefore most of the inhabitants were slaughtered by the Romans at the gate; the rest surrendered and were sold into slavery.

Plutarch, Life of Sertorius?

After many amazing military feats, Sertorius eventually returns to Rome to run for the tribuneship but loses thanks to opposition from Sulla; civil war breaks out in Rome and he eventually – being on the losing side – escapes back to Spain:

4 He found [Spain’s] peoples strong in numbers and in fighting men, and since the rapacity and insolence of the Roman officials sent thither from time to time had made them hostile to the empire in all its aspects, he tried to win them over, the chiefs by his personal intercourse with them, the masses by a remission of taxes. His greatest popularity, however, was won by ridding them of the necessity for furnishing quarters for soldiers; for he compelled his soldiers to build their winter-quarters in the suburbs of the cities, and he himself was first to pitch his tent there. 5 However, he did not rely wholly on the goodwill of the Barbarians, but he armed all the Roman settlers of the country who were of military age, and by undertaking the construction of all sorts of engines of war and the building of triremes, kept the cities well in hand, being mild in the affairs of peace, but showing himself formidable by the preparations which he made against his enemies.

7 1 When he learned that Sulla was master of Rome, and that the party of Marius and Carbo was on the way to ruin, he expected that an army with a commander would come at once to fight with him.^[9] He therefore sent Julius Salinator with six thousand men-at‑arms to bar the passage of the Pyrenees. And not long afterwards Caius Annius was sent out by Sulla, and seeing that Julius could not be assailed, he knew not what to do, and sat idly down at the base of the mountains. 2 But a certain Calpurnius, surnamed Lanarius, treacherously killed Julius, whose soldiers abandoned the heights of the Pyrenees; whereupon Annius crossed over and advanced with a large force, routing all opposition. Sertorius, not being able to cope with him, took refuge with three thousand men in New Carthage; there he embarked his forces, crossed the sea, and landed in the country of the Maurusii, in Africa. 3 But while his soldiers were getting water and were off their guard, the barbarians fell upon them, and after losing many men, Sertorius sailed back again to Spain. From this shore too he was repulsed, but after being joined by some Cilician pirate vessels he attacked the island of Pityussa, overpowered the guard which Annius had set there, and effected a landing. After a short time, however, Annius came with numerous ships and five thousand men-at‑arms, and with him Sertorius attempted to fight a decisive naval battle, although the vessels which he had were light and built for speed rather than for fighting. 4 But the sea ran high with a strong west wind, and the greater part of the vessels of Sertorius, owing to their lightness, were driven aslant upon the rocky shore, while he himself, with a few ships, excluded from the open sea by the storm, and from the land by the enemy, was tossed about for ten days in a battle with adverse waves and fierce surges, and with difficulty held his own.

All things come to an end, and Sertorius eventually endures a number of defeats. If you are interested in the full story, the rest can be found in the entire account by Plutarch. The above gives you some idea of how Romans could go rogue and become unRoman through exile, and also the ways that they fantasized about what we might call the ‘Roman saviour complex’ whereby they, and only they, could make a foreign people into a proper fighting force against their Roman opponents – and how all people really, really wanted to become Roman if they could.