Relegatio


Relegatio under Roman law was the mildest form of exile, involving banishment from Rome, but not loss of citizenship, or confiscation of property.
A notable victim of relegatio was Ovid.

Origins

Under the early Republic, citizens could be cut off from the community – fire and water – by the ‘interdictio aquae et ignis’; and to forestall this sometimes went into voluntary exile, where citizenship might be maintained or lost, but property would normally be retained. By contrast relegatio was mainly employed to expel foreigners from Rome: only under the late Republic did it begin to be applied to political figures within Rome.

Under the empire

The emperors made relegatio one of their main weapons of banishment, alongside deportatio. Relegatio might be for a specific period or for life; it might be to a fixed spot, or simply outside Rome/Italy: thus Tacitus describes how one senator “chose the famous and agreeable island of Lesbos for his exile”. In any case it remained a softer penalty than the alternative of deportatio, which generally entailed loss of citizenship and property as well as banishment to a specific spot.
Ovid in his exile made play of the fact that he remained a citizen in charge of his property in Rome, though he was unable either to have his relegatio rescinded, or his exile switched to a pleasanter spot. By contrast, Juvenal was subjected to deportatio; and though his sentence was eventually repealed he returned to Rome a ruined man.
Under the later empire, jurists set up a hierarchy of banishments: temporary relegatio/permanent relegatio/relegation to an island or fixed spot/deportatio.

Cultural echoes

praised a stoic senator who heard he had been condemned in his absence: “ ‘To exile’, says he, ‘or to death?’ - ‘To exile’ - ‘What about my property?’ - ‘It has not been confiscated’ - ‘Well then, let us go to Arica and take our lunch there’”.