DEPORTATION. - It is a penalty of the Roman imperial period, consisting in forced residence on an island or in an oasis, which, according to some, would have replaced the aqua et igni interdictio. It is considered by Mommsen as the highest degree of relegatio and would have been introduced by Tiberius. Recent research, however, leads to connecting it with extraordinary repression, that is, with the repression exercised by the emperor and his delegates with a character of discretion and through trials free of forms.
Deportation is a penalty proper to the honestiores, that is, to members of the higher classes, and, given its gravity, could be inflicted only with particular precautions. Besides being perpetual, it is always accompanied by the confiscation of patrimony (ademptio bonorum) and by the deprivation of dignitas; despite certain statements in the sources, it does not appear that it produced, at least until the first half of the 3rd century, the loss of citizenship. From the confiscation of goods followed the invalidation of the will; the effects of deportation on family relationships are debated, while it is instead held that the deportee lost the capacity to receive by will.
Deportation was also inflicted on Christians during the persecutions. Worthy of note is the case of Pope Pontian (v.) who was deported to Sardinia and who here, as the Liberian Catalogue testifies, renounced his own office (discinctus est); this is explained both by the desire to avoid the Church having at its head a man condemned to a penalty entailing the deprivation of dignitas, and by the difficulties arising from the patrimonial incapacity, at least partial, consequent upon the confiscation of goods.
The characteristics of deportation in the 3rd century are substantially proper also to that which we find subsequently described in the Theodosian and Justinian codes.
Bibliography3 works
Rodolfo Danieli