Asȳlum
（
ἄσυλον). Among the Greeks the right of sanctuary
appertained to those who took refuge in temples, altars, sacred groves, and at statues of the
gods, and these were resorted to by debtors, slaves, and criminals as places of refuge. Only
certain definite places, however, gave absolute protection, and we read of persons being
forced from the sanctuary by the application of fire, while others were starved out, as in the
well-known case of
Pausanias (q.v.). In Roman
times the
ius asyli was so frequently an obstruction to the course of
justice that the Senate limited it to a few cities (
Tac.
Ann. iii. 60).
The Roman law did not recognize the right of sanctuary in general, and Livy speaks of it as
a Greek custom (
xxxv. 51). Yet by special enactment the Temple of
Divus Iulius was made an asylum of refuge (Dio Cass. xlvii. 19), and slaves in the provinces,
if ill-treated by their masters, could take refuge before a statue of the emperor (
Gaius, i. 53; cf.
Servus).
On the general subject, see Förster,
De Asylis Graecorum
(Berlin, 1847); Neu,
De Asylis (Göttingen, 1837);
Bringer,
De Asylorum Origine, Usu, etc.
(Leyden, 1828); and Rein,
Criminalrecht der Römer, p. 896.
