L'histoire de l'exil

Benjamin West - Kleombrotos sent into Exile by Leonidas II (1768), Tate Gallery

The exile of prisoners to a distant place, where they can “pay their debt to society,” make themselves useful, and not contaminate others with their ideas or their criminal acts, is a practice as old as civilization itself. The rulers of ancient Rome and Greece sent their dissidents off to distant colonies. Socrates chose death over the torment of exile from Athens. The poet Ovid was exiled to a fetid port on the Black Sea. Georgian Britain sent its pickpockets and thieves to Australia. Nineteenth-century France sent convicted criminals to Guyana. Portugal sent its undesirables to Mozambique.22

From Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum.