In around 621 B.C., when Aristaechmus was the eponymous archon, the Athenians assigned to Dracon the task of making laws. For the first time the laws were written down and anybody could have recourse to them. The change is held to be of decisive importance in relation to the past, when only the eupatrids had the knowledge and the right to interpret the law. Of Dracon's laws, the only one that remained in force, from the time of Solon, with some modifications, to that of Demosthenes, was the law on manslaughter. The doubts that have been expressed about whether Dracon eventually made laws on other subjects seem not to be valid. Dracon's laws existed; and they have remained proverbial for their severity, despite the fact that we know nothing except for the one about manslaughter. It has been thought that his laws envisaged the death penalty for all crimes, but this too seems rather hyperbolic. The most probable thing is that the most frequent penalty for crimes was loss of citizen rights (atimia) or exile, and only in a case of non-compliance did the guilty party risk his life. The very few known shreds of Dracon's legislature are mainly due to Aristotle (Athenaion Politeia 4.1-3). For this reason, certain references such as that the property essential for attaining a public post was valued in money and that the property ratio for a man to be elected archon or general was 1:10 must be regarded as anachronisms not relating to the 7th century.

Solon was the son of Exekestides, a noble connected with the house of the Medontidae. His appointment as diallaktes, coinciding with his election as eponymous archon, should be dated to around 594/3 B.C. His poems frequently express his political and philosophical views (Diogenes Laertius, i. 61, Solon, Elegies 3.27-40, 13.37-64, 15, Tetrameters 34). It has been argued that in his day the use of prose for such subjects was not yet standard. At any rate, the important thing is that from his oeuvre we can get information about social conditions and about the problems that there were at Athens before he set to work on his legislature; and also about the measures he took to deal with them. Information about his life, known to us from older sources too, is collected in Plutarch's Life of him, (Solon 25). Apparently a particular trait of his was moderation, in an age of tensions and acute confrontation. Besides their political and constitutional limb, his reforms also included legislation about contractual, private, and transactional law. Under the last-mentioned falls the founding of the Eliaia. Having completed the work assigned to him, he went into voluntary exile for ten years. Tradition has it that this spontaneous withdrawal was one way of avoiding complaints from all those who disagreed with his reforms, but was at the same time a test period for the new measures (Aristotle, Athenaion Politeia 7.2-4, 11.1).