ACCOMPANIMENT INTO EXILE

The journey into exile was certainly a heart-wrenching event. The fugitive was leaving behind his homeland, his friends, and his family, perhaps forever. While banishment could be a lonely experience, exiles did not make this fateful trip by themselves. Indeed, a banished man probably went abroad with a retinue of freedmen, slaves, and perhaps a free friend or two. Our extant sources provide us only a few glimpses of the companions that accompanied an exile. Although Cicero's correspondence from his exile in 58/57 is our most detailed account of the personal life of an exile, the author makes little mention of those who journeyed with him. Perhaps his silence about his associates indicates his sense of loss and isolation as an exul. His letters occasionally speak of companions (generally freedmen), but he gives us no details. Cicero's friend Sicca accompanied him from Vibo to Brundisium and had apparently told the orator he would stay with him on his journey, but returned home before Cicero crossed over into Greece.

Later epistles in the Ciceronian corpus provide us with a more detailed picture of an exile's retinue. During his exile from 47 to 45, M. Claudius Marcellus had some freeborn Roman companions; perhaps they were also defeated Pompeians. One of them, P. Magius Cilo, murdered Marcellus over a personal dispute at Athens while they were preparing to return to Rome in May 45. Marcellus also had several freedmen and slaves with him while in exile.