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EISANGELIA.
bringing a cause (elffdyew) into a proper court. [DiAETETAE ; dike.] The cause itself was tried, as is explained under dike, by dicasts chosen by lot; but all the preliminary proceedings, such as receiving the accusation, drawing up the indictment, introducing the cause into court, &c., were conducted by the regular magistrate, who attended in his own department to all that was understood in Athenian law by the fiytpovia to? diKaaTTjpiov. Thus we find the strategi, the logistae, the eTrtcrraTcu ratv SrjfJiOffiwv tpycavj the £Trt/ji.er)ral rov djUTropiov, &c., possessing this yyGj-iovict,; but it was not the chief business of any of the public magistrates, except of the archons and perhaps of the eleven. The chief part of the duties of the former, and especially of the thes-mothetae, consisted in receiving accusations and bringing causes to trial (elffdyew) in the proper courts. [AncHON.]
EISANGELIA (aVcryyeTu’a), signifies, in its primary and most general sense, a denunciation of any kind (Schb’mann, De ComitUs, p. 181), but, much more usually, an information laid before the council or the assembly of the people, and the consequent impeachment and trial of state criminals at Athens under novel or extraordinary circumstances. Among these were the occasions upon which manifest crimes were alleged to have been committed, and yet of such a nature as the existing laws had failed to anticipate or at least describe specifically (&ypa<f)a dSt/c^/mra), the result of which omission would have been, but for the enactment by which the accusations in question might be preferred (v6/.ios darayy€ATiK6s’), that a prosecutor would not have known to what magistrate to apply ; that a magistrate, if applied to, could not with safety have accepted the indictment or brought it into court; and that, in short, there would have been a total failure of justice. (Har-pocrat. s. v.) The process in question was peculiarly adapted to supply these deficiencies ; it pointed out, as the authority competent to determine the criminality of the alleged act, the assembly of the people, to which applications for this purpose might be made on the first business-day of each prytany (/cupta eK/cA7j<na, Harpocrat.), or the council, which was at all times capable of undertaking such investigations ; and occasionally the accusation was submitted to the cognizance of both these bodies. After the offence had been declared penal, the forms of the trial and amount of the punishment were prescribed by the same authority ; and, as .upon /the conviction of the offenders a precedent would be established for the future, the whole of the proceedings, although extraordinary, and not originating in any specific law, may be considered as virtually establishing a penal statute, retrospective in its first application. (Lycurg. c. Leocrat. p. 149, ed Steph.)
The speech of Euryptolemus (Xen. Hell. i. 7. sul) fin.^) clearly shows that the crime charged against the ten generals who fought at Arginusae was one of these unspecified offences. The decree of the senate against Antiphon and his colleagues (Pint. Vit. Dec. Orator, p. 833, e), directing that they should be tried, and, if found guilty, punished as traitors, seems to warrant the inference, that their delinquency (viz. having undertaken an embassy to Sparta by order of the Four Hundred, a government declared illegal upon the reinstatement of the democracy), did not amount
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EISANGELIA.
to treason in the usual sense of the term, but re quired a special declaration by the senate to render it cognizable as such by the; Heliaea. Another instance of treason by implication, prosecuted as an extraordinary and unspecified crime, appears in the case of Leocrates, who is, in the speech already cited, accused of having absented himself from his country, and dropped the character of an Athe nian citizen at a time when the state was in immi nent danger. Offences, however, of this nature were by no means the only ones, nor indeed the most numerous class of those to which extraordi nary denunciations were applicable. They might be adopted when the charge embraced a combina tion of crimes, as that of treason and. impiety in the famous case of Alcibiades, for each of which a common indictment (ypa<pfi) was admissible, when the accused were persons of great influence in the state, when the imputed crime, though punishable by the ordinary laws, was peculiarly heinous, or when a more speedy trial than was permitted by the usual course of business was requisite to ac complish the ends of justice. (Schb’mann, De Com. p. 190 ; Harpocrat.) Circumstances such as these would, of course, be very often pretended by an in former to excite the greater odium against the accused, and the adoption of the process in ques tion must have been much more frequent than was absolutely necessary. .
The first step taken by the informer was to reduce his denunciation to writing, and submit it immediately to the cognizance of the council, which had a discretionary power to accept or reject it. (Lys. c. Nicom. p. 185.) Schb’mann maintains that a reference to this body was also necessary when it was intended to bring the matter before the assembly of the people, but that its agency was in such cases limited to permitting the impeachment to be announced for discussion, and directing the proedri to obtain a hearing for the informer. The thesmothetae are also mentioned by Pollux (viii. 87) as taking part in bringv ing the matter before the assembly, but upon what occasion they were so employed we can only conjecture.
In causes intended for the cognizance of the council only., after the reception of the denunciation, three courses with respect to it might be adopted by that body. If the alleged offence were punishable by a fine of no greater amount than five hundred drachmae, the council itself formed a court competent for’~rW"trial ; if it was of a graver character they might pass a decree, such as that in the case of Antiphon already mentioned, directing the proper officers to introduce the cause to a He-liastic court, and prescribing the time and forms of the trial, and the penalty to be inflicted upon the conviction of the criminals ; lastly, if the matter were highly important, and from doubts or other reasons they required the sanction of the assembly, they might submit the cause as it stood to the consideration of that body. In the first case, the trial was conducted before the council with all the forms of an ordinary court, and if, upon the assessment of penalties, the offence seen> ed to deserve a heavier punishment than fell with* in its competency, the trial was transferred to a Heliastic court, by the delivery of the sentence of the . council (xaTtiymo-is) to the thesmothetae by the scribe of the prytanes, and upon these officers it then devolved to bring the criminals to justice.
