ΕΙΣΑΓΓΕΛΙΑ in Athens

Εἰσαγγελία, ‘impeachment’, has regularly had a few pages devoted to it in books on Athenian law or the Athenian constitution. Recently a book has been published on the subject, one of a series on Athenian legal topics by M. H. Hansen: in it he assembles the evidence for 144 certain, probable or possible instances of εἰσαγγελία between 500 and 323 B.C., and his analysis leads him to disagree with much that has been said hitherto. However, I am not persuaded that all his own conclusions are correct.One note of warning should be sounded at the beginning, εἰσαγγέλλειν, like γράφεσθαι, φαίνειν, ἐνδεικνύναι and other verbs used of initiating legal proceedings, is a word within whose normal range of meaning one or more technical senses developed. The existence of a technical sense did not, of course, put an end to the non-technical use of the word, and we must always be alert to the possibility that even in a legal context a word may have been used not in its technical legal sense, or that in part or all of the period with which we are concerned a set of technical terms, each with its own distinct meaning, may not have fully crystallised: for instance, unless the word is corrupt, Lys. x 1 uses εἰσήγγελλε of a prosecution which was not an εἰσαγγελία in any technical sense of the word (Gernet and Bizos therefore emend to ἐπήγγελλε); within a single speech, Isae. xi, a charge of maltreating an orphan is referred to both as an εἰσαγγελία (§§6, 15) and as a γραφή (§§28, 31, 32, 35).