The historical contribution of islands to prisons goes back to antiquity. The Romans distinguished between relegatio ad insulam and deportatio in insulam[1] . Beyond the strictly legal content (deportatio, which caused the convicted person to lose his civil rights and the property of his estate, was in theory a perpetual punishment and was pronounced by the emperor, unlike relegatio, which was pronounced by a governor and did not have the same rigour), we can see the articulation of two notions that the legislations will take up when it comes to criminal law and islands: mobility in remoteness (relegatio ad), immobility in confinement (deportatio in). In this respect, a gradation of punishments is observed: temporary or perpetual relegation (outside a city or province), relegation to an island, deportation to an island, death penalty[2] . There are also three kinds of exile: banning from specific places (in particular Rome), exclusion from any place other than a specially designated place, confinement to an island (not specifying which one before sentencing).
It was possible to relegate, if not deport, anywhere as long as it was far away, as shown by the example of Ovid in the Pont-Euxin (Black Sea). The island punishment was no less practiced, also marked by distance, with the deportation to the Kerkennah archipelago (Tunisia) of Sempronius Gracchus, lover of Julia, daughter of Augustus, who was also relegated by her father to Pandataria (Ventotene), in the Pontine archipelago (where her mother joined her), before dying in Reggio di Calabria five years later in 14 AD. Tiberius exiled Julia’s daughter there, as well as other women of the imperial family: Octavia, wife of Nero, Flavia Domitilla, wife of a rival of Domitian, Orestilla, wife of Caligula, Julia Livilla, Agrippina the Younger (daughters of Germanicus), exiled to the island of Ponza, Julia Vipsania, in the archipelago of Tremiti. All of them (except Flavia Domitilla) for matters of morals (adultery, abortion, debauchery, impiousness) but probably also for the same reasons, political, explaining the sending to Capri of Lucilla, sister of Commodus, and Crispinia, his wife, accused of conspiracy against the emperor, or of Seneca in Corsica on the grounds of his adultery with Julia Livillia, but also victim of intrigues in the entourage of Claudius[3] . In 417, the first Western Roman emperor, Priscus Attalus, was exiled to Lipari (in the Aeolian Islands, where Caracalla’s wife, Plautilla, had been exiled and then murdered), accused of usurpation. The last emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was sent by Odoacre to Nisida, in front of Naples.
From Tacitus (Annals) and Suetonius (Lives of the Twelve Caesars), among others, we know what use Tiberius made of the Sporades (island of Kinaros) and especially the Cyclades as places of exile: Seriphos (where Cassius Severus, a political opponent, and Vistilia, a matron accused of prostitution, were shipped), Kythnos (where Junius Silanus, a proconsul accused of embezzlement, was relegated), Lesbos (for Junius Gallio, because he had proposed a change of etiquette that did not respect precedence), Amorgos (where the proconsul Vibius Serenus was deported), Andros (Flaccus, prefect of Egypt), but also Gyaros and Donoussa, which seem to have been reserved for the most severe banishments[4] and of which historiography has not retained much because of three factors, the first of which is the strategy of oblivion that presides over banishment (when the deportees are not suppressed in one way or another – murder, misery… – at the end of their island exile). Another explanation comes from the fact that this strategy, with some exceptions (notably that of some four thousand freedmen deported to Sardinia in 19 AD because of their “Egyptian and Judaic superstitions”, and who were charged with repressing banditry there), mainly concerned isolated individuals about whom historians only spoke (third explanation) when these individuals had some title to notoriety.
If the fate of each of the Roman convicts taken separately is not, at least for them, anecdotal, we are nevertheless faced with the observation of a disparity of insular experiences that cannot be globalised. What do the lives of John the Evangelist on Patmos and Agrippa Postumus, grandson of Augustus, on the island of Pianosa have in common, for example? What is there in common between islands, mostly very small, where everything was deemed to be lacking (Kinaros, Seriphos, Gyaros…) and others where rich Romans had built holiday homes (in Capri, Pandatera, Nisida…)? One last observation remains, however: the Romans seem to have invented (even if drafts of it could be found in the Hellenic period[5]) the idea of prison-islands whose use, still empirical, is at the same time already systematic.
[1] See Vincent Jolivet, “L’exil sur les îles dans l’Antiquité romaine”, in Brigitte Marin dir., Les Petites Îles de Méditerranée occidentale, Marseille, Éditions Gaussen, 2021, p. 172-175.
[2] See Yann Rivière, “L’interdictio aqua et igni et la deportatio sous le Haut-Empire romain”, in Philippe Blaudeau, Exil et relégation, les tribulations du sage et du saint durant l’Antiquité romaine et chrétienne (I -VIere siècles après J.- C.), Paris, De Boccard, 2008.C.), Paris, De Boccard, 2008, and, by the same author, “La relégation et le retour des relégués dans l’Empire romain (I -IIIere siècles), in Claudia Moatti, Wolfgang Kaiser, Christophe Pébarthe dir., Le monde de l’itinérance en Méditerranée de l’Antiquité à l’époque moderne, Bordeaux-Pessac, Ausonius Éditions, 2009, p. 535-570.
[3] See Roselyne Immongault Nomewa, ‘Les exilées romaines et l’espace répulsif dans l’empire romain : l’apport des sources littéraires latines’, CHA, 2014, online at https://www.academia.edu
[4] See Étienne Wolf, “Ambivalence of the islands in Roman culture: the example of the life of Tiberius”, Bulletin de l’Association Guillaume Budé, 2008, 1, p. 139-145.
[5] See Patrice Brun, Les Archipels Égéens dans l’Antiquité grecque (V -IIee siècle avant notre ère), Annales littéraires de l’université de Besançon, Institut des sciences et techniques de l’Antiquité, Centre de recherches d’histoire ancienne, vol. 157 (1996), p. 23.