Displaced Persons: The Literature of Exile from Cicero to Boethius

Exile is a political act involving loss of power. Five authors--Cicero, Ovid, Seneca the Younger, Dio Chrysostomus, and Anicius Manlius Boethius--all exiled from Rome, are examined in this fascinating study of the depiction of exile. Although separated from the first four by several centuries, Boethius has an intellectual, circumstantial, and spiritual affinity with them. Jo-Marie Claassen explores the various means of literary sublimation that individual exiles found for the feeling of social and political isolation that they experienced.

Displaced Persons is the first book to adopt an analytical approach to the literature of exile through to the virtual end of the Classical era. It will appeal to all those interested in Roman life and literature, and in the moving phenomenon of exile.