Exile is a political act, involving loss of power. Five authors, all exiled from Rome, are examined in this book, which analyses the literature of exile and takes its consideration through to the virtual end of the Classical era: the author examines the various means of literary sublimation that individual exiles - Cicero, Ovid, Seneca the Younger, Dio Chrysostom and Anicius Manlius Boethius - found for the feeling of social and political isolation that they experienced.