EXILE, in Roman Antiquity, a form of punishment, of which there were various degrees. Offences which came under the category of "capitalia" were punished either with death or with banishment; and this banishment consisted in the aqua et ignis interdictio, which involved the loss of citizenship to the criminal. Other kinds of banishment were properly called relegatio, which word could not be used as a term of personal reproach in the same manner with exul. Thus Ovid declares himself to have been merely a relegatus, alleging that Augustus
Nil nisi me patriis jussit abire foci.
This distinction between relegatio and exsilium subsisted also in the times of the republic. During that era no Roman citizen could be deprived of his citizenship by a special statute unless he were previously condemned in a judicium. Even such as were convicted of capital offences did not lose their citizenship at Rome until they were admitted citizens of some other state; and this was effected not by the ademptio civitatis, but by the interdictio aqua et ignis. Any citizen, however, who voluntarily exchanged his Roman citizenship for that of some other state, ceased by that very act to be a Roman citizen, as it was one of the fundamental principles of the Roman law that a man could not simultaneously be a citizen of two states. (See CITIZEN; OSTRACISM, &c.)