The synoecism, or political unification of the cities of Attica, attributed to Theseus, must already have been completed by the end of the 8th century B.C. According to the atthidographers, the Codrid Acastus resigned from the kingship in favour of the rank of lifelong archon. Tenure for life became tenure for 10 years in the mid-8th century, while the list of archons of Attica, the office now being annual, starts with Creon in 682/1 B.C. Power was traditionally distributed, to start with, among the nine archons (king, eponymous archon, polemarch, and six lawgivers, tenure being for one year) and the Areopagus, in which ex-archons participated for life. The population was divided into four tribes, each bearing the name of a son of Ion (Geleontes, Aegikoreis, Argadeis, Hopletes), and each tribe was in turn divided into three trittyes. It is to Theseus that Plutarch attributes the division of the population into three classes (Eupatrids, Geomoroi, Demiourgoi), of whom only the Eupatrids had civic rights.

The only political event of the 7th century mentioned by later historians is the Curse of Cylon: this is perhaps because it was connected with the Alcmaeonid family. In about 630 B.C., Cylon, a prizewinner at the Olympic Games and a member of the Eupatrids, attempted with the support of his father-in-law Theagenes tyrant of Megara to seize the Acropolis. After a siege of several days, Cylon and his brother made their escape, while the remaining conspirators took refuge as suppliants at the altar of Athena Polias, which however they quit on a promise that they would be brought to justice. But the besiegers murdered them. On Solon's intervention, traditionally, the eponymous archon Megacles, an Alcmaeonid, agreed to be tried for the murder. The Alcmaeonids were exiled, and Epimenides of Crete was summoned to cleanse the city of the curse. Both Cylon's coup d'etat and the banishment of the Alcmaeonids are put down by some historians to confrontations between aristocratic families in the late 7th century.

In 621 B.C., possibly, in order to win the people's support, the eupatrids assigned to Dracon the drawing up of a code of laws. The constitution attributed to Dracon by Aristotle must probably have been written by the oligarchs in 411 B.C., but they drew for their reforms on the Archaic lawgiver. Certain scholars assert that Dracon granted civic rights to the hoplites. But the only law of his that remained in force into the Classical period and can be attributed to him with relative certainty is to do with manslaughter.