It is generally accepted today that in the first half of the 7th century B.C. a need for written laws developed among the Hellenic cities. This work was normally done by one of the city archons, invested with the particular powers. At Athens in the early Archaic period, the law was meted out by the archons at will, according to Aristotle. The earlier institution of basileus had by now been transformed into that of archon basileus. This latter now exercised, of all his original legislative and juridical powers, only those which were connected with defending sacred law and putting it into effect. For this reason he also provided for the crimes of impiety and manslaughter, given that murder was always seen as sacrilege, attracted the wrath of the gods, and laid a curse (agos) upon the city.

One of the most ancient lawgivers - we cannot even be sure if he really existed or is a mythical person - was Lycurgus of Sparta. The special thing about this figure is bound up with the fact that he himself forbade the laws he instituted to be set down in writing, yet at the same time he provided for strict punishment for anyone who attempted to change them. In fact Sparta did not have written law, at least until the Classical period. Also the word rhetra, as the laws were called at Sparta, implies their oral nature.

The ancient Hellenes believed that the earliest written laws were those of Zaleucus for the Epizephyrian Locrians, and they dated them conventionally to about 662 B.C. Zaleucus himself asserted that he had received them from Athena. To attribute laws to divine inspiration was a commonplace of the early lawgivers, so as without fail to invest their work with the necessary awe and make sure that it was faithfully adhered to. Lycurgus, too, asserted that his laws came from the Delphic Oracle. A similar tradition was widespread in Crete, where the legislature and the dispensing of justice were connected with the mythical figures of Minos and Rhadamanthys.
The laws of Zaleucus, like those of Dracon at Athens, were thought to be very harsh. Some of them - the so-called lex talionis for example - were analogous with the famous "an eye for an eye". But the sources differ about its attribution to Zaleucus.

The aforementioned law was due, according to Diodorus, to another 7th century B.C. lawgiver, also from a Hellenic colony in the West: Charondas lawgiver of Catana. He is credited with laws relating to commercial transactions, to citizens' compulsory participation in juridical organs, and with [for the first time] the provision of penal prosecution in cases of false witness. This procedure was called episkepsis.

The cases of Zaleucus and Charondas have to do with legislatures connected with the founding of a new city. Other older cities called in the help of a lawgiver mainly if they were facing social tension. Thus Pittacus, better known from later sources as one of the Seven Sages, was appointed aisymnetes [a post we know very little about] at Mytilene. In the case in question, however, it seems that this was equivalent to ten years of power as a tyrant. The lawgiver frequently had to play the role of mediator between social classes in conflict, and was known as katartister or diallaktes, as for instance Demonax was at Cyrene, Aristarchus at Ephesus, and Solon at Athens (Herodotus, Histories 4. 161).

But it was no rare phenomenon for some stranger to the city to be preferred as lawgiver, so that impartiality was guaranteed. Demonax, for example, came from Mantinea, Aristarchus from Athens. Correspondingly, one Andromadas of Rhegium wrote laws for a city of Chalcidice -unknown to us-, and Philolaus of Corinth gave laws to Thebes. Of the work of other lawgivers only fragmentary elements are known to us: Aristides of Kea legislated about the proper behaviour of women; Pheidon of Corinth and Phaleas of Chalcedon about the number and extent of holdings of land.