When individuals transgressed Roman law or changing customs, penalties could include a forced separation from home. The diversity of this practice in the Republican and Imperial periods has been well-surveyed, even debated. W. follows the trail of evidence into Late Antiquity, reconstructing the legal frameworks and – where possible – its lived realities. W. has written a measured account that digs deep into what we know about this specific form of punishment. It is the history of a difficult topic, one which is both ‘everywhere and nowhere’ in the ancient sources (p. 1).
W. sets out the terms of his research in his introduction. First, he explains why he limits his data to the period between the tetrarchy and the last western emperor. Although the concept of forcefully removing an individual from a community continued to be practised as a form of punishment after a.d. 476, it was done so on a diminished, local scale in the territories of the former Western Empire. Next, W. makes clear his commitment to linguistic precision. Since Latin writers used a variety of terms to describe the practice, W. advocates the use of a broad English category, ‘banishment’, to alert readers to the nuances that may have existed within overlapping ancient words (relegatio, deportatio, coercitio and exilium) that refer to the concept. Third, and critically, W. explains the two-fold problem that can bedevil researchers in Roman law. In some cases, sources describe the ‘legal principles’ of a particular case but omit any information that might help us flesh out the application of the theories; in other cases, we have evidence for an ‘actual case’ but we lack any knowledge of the ‘legal categories’ to which it belonged (p. 8). Naturally, the uneven nature of the sources can lead to some frustration, especially in ‘extra-legal’ texts, like literary works; but W. is careful in handling them. He is equally attuned to the ways in which legal texts, like the Theodosian Code and the Justinianic Digest, mirrored social norms but also ‘steer[ed] social realities’ (p. 12).
The book proceeds in seven chapters. The first is introductory (Chapter 1, ‘Varieties and Commonalities’). The final five make up the book's strong spine. These five chapters discuss ‘The Authorities’ who laid down the law (Chapter 3), ‘The Enforcers’ who applied it (Chapter 4), and chapters on ‘The Banished’ and ‘Life in Banishment’ (Chapters 5 and 6). The last chapter (Chapter 7) describes the ‘Return of the Exile’. Only Chapter 2, ‘Banishment and the Church’, seems to break the elegant structure of the book – in fact, from an editorial point of view, I wonder whether it may have been better placed after the sequence of chapters just described – but that observation should be taken as an aside. W.'s treatment of Christian banishment in Chapter 2 is, by far, one of the outstanding contributions of his book. I will explain why in my concluding remarks.
First, the ‘juristic backdrop’ (p. 16). W. guides readers through the vocabulary of the phenomenon and tries to illuminate common principles behind the legal uses of the words. W. explains that the term deportatio has a ‘permanent’ quality, involving ‘a loss of property as well as of Roman citizenship’ (p. 19); relegatio, a temporary or a permanent one, potentially involving the loss of property; and exilium, an ambiguous position, sometimes but not always synonymous with relegatio (pp. 20–3). These fluctuating definitions are set against the expanding world of Roman citizenship after a.d. 212. Here, W. is also right to emphasise how social stigmas travelled across legal terminology (p. 35).
Who held the legal right to banish? How was the punishment effected? The authorities in charge included emperors as well as lower magistrates like provincial governors and praetorian prefects. W. makes the argument that we should include ‘the urban populace’ (p. 77) in this category, too, given their role in voicing displeasure against officials, as the people of Rome did in a.d. 375, driving the elder Symmachus from the city during a food shortage. W. sees episodes like this one as ‘evidence of popular participation in the political process’ (p. 77). The role of bishops as arbiters of court cases is also mentioned but no evidence adduced to confirm their role in banishment decisions (pp. 77–8). Sources like Athanasius, John Chrysostom and Eusebius of Vercelli help W. paint a vivid picture of how the banished were extracted from their homes, transported to foreign settings and supervised (pp. 82–97).
What was life like for the banished? Chapter 5 analyses the ancient documentation; Chapter 6, the rhetorical qualities of these texts. In each, W. reminds us to see diversity in the historical experience (p. 98). He describes several categories of criminals attested in our legal sources (Marcian, Ulpian and Papinian) as having suffered banishment: forgers, embezzlers and extortionists. W. also treats Constantine's decision to promote marriage by using relegatio to punish fathers or guardians who tried to betroth their daughters, or wards, more than once in any two-year window (p. 102, discussing Theodosian Code 3.5.5). Other cases are mentioned which illustrate the role of banishment in punishing treasonous behaviour. The latter part of the chapter pivots from the legal evidence, however, to examples of political rivalry and how instances of ‘private antagonisms’ such as those faced by Prohaeresius, recounted in the Lives of the Sophists, could lead to banishment (pp. 115–17). Other cases involving women are also discussed, including evidence threatening banishment for women who ‘tampered with a pregnant womb’ (p. 123). One of the most intriguing points of the study emerges at this point: the sources which describe life in banishment, first-hand, are all ‘works [written] by bishops about bishops’ (p. 127). Here, W. astutely observes how the rhetoric of martyrdom features prominently in these episcopal accounts, such as those provided by Lucifer of Cagliari (pp. 129–34).
The last chapter covers ‘recall and restoration’ (pp. 145–9), again by turning to the jurists. The important role of ‘humility and flattery’ (p. 153) in arranging for return brings the book to a close, as does the emerging role of bishops in brokering these appeals (pp. 159–60). The book lacks a formal conclusion – all of which brings me back to Chapter 2, ‘Banishment and the Church’, the nuanced methodological awareness demonstrated therein and the central contribution it makes to Late Antiquity.
It would have been very easy, as W. himself admits, to write the history of banishment during this period of later Roman history as if it fell neatly into separate categories (sacred and secular) and then ‘simply address them one at a time’ to explain how the institutional church became involved in one of the long-standing central facets of Roman law (p. 41). The fact that W. does not take this approach – in effect, avoiding any false equivalency between the Christian evidence and non-Christian evidence – makes his conclusions about Roman law, its implementation, its effects and the rhetoric of those affected by it all the more compelling (see his sections on ‘Conversion by Banishment’ [pp. 46–52] and ‘Religious Dissidents’ [pp. 117–22]).
This book is not just the story of a powerful form of ancient punishment. It is a history of how different individuals and groups constructed their overlapping and, sometimes, even competing narratives of identity around this central social practice. The fact that it happens to include several noteworthy examples of Christians who deployed the rhetoric of ‘persecution’ when they found themselves banished by their own Christian government makes an excellent argument for appreciating how ancient sources crossed secular and sacred divides.
