[1] While the concept covers many commonplace criminal offenses, the term is used in particular to refer to a 1929 law directed against left-wing political dissidents who sought to violently overthrow the government.
These include intentional inebriation leading to an illegal act, participation in a quarrel resulting in violence and membership of a criminal organisation.
The establishment of the idionymon resulted from the perceived need to defend the gains of the republican reforms of Venizelos' Liberal party against the growing threat of leftist insurrection.
The Second Hellenic Republic was inherently unstable, and furthermore, by the late 1920s, the old political dualism between Venizelists and Royalists was beginning to be threatened by agitation in the emerging working class.
Following the establishment of the dictatorial "4th of August Regime" in 1936, the idionymon was replaced by Emergency Law 117/1936 ("concerning measures to combat communism and the consequences thereof"), which allowed authorities to require people to sign declarations condemning communism, refusal to sign which would be taken as evidence of guilt, and added harsher penalties, including five-year jail terms and internal exile in Greece.