control the streets. These officials first appear in inscriptions
after 350, but are mentioned in literature somewhat earlier. An
account of the Athenian constitution, ascribed formerly to Xenophon
and written (as is now generally agreed) about 430-424 B.C., mentions
briefly the prosecution of those who built on to the public land, that
is (apparently), who encroached upon the streets. But it is silent as
to specific officers, Astynomi or other. Plato, however, in his
'Laws', which must date a little earlier than his death in 347,
alludes on several occasions to such officers. They were to look after
the private houses 'in order that they may all be built according to
laws', and to police and clean the roads and water-channels, both
inside and outside of the city. A prohibition of balconies leaning
over the public streets, and of verandas projecting into them, is also
mentioned in two or three writers of the fourth century and is said to
go back to a much earlier date, though its antiquity was probably
exaggerated.[22]

[22] Plato, _Laws_ 763 c, 779 c, &c.; Aristotle, _Ath. Pol._ 50;
Arist., _Oec._ ii. 5, p. 134; Xenophon, _Ath. Pol._ iii. 4;
Schol. to Aeschines, iii. 24. The fact that the word 'Astynomos'
occurs in Aeschylus does not justify the writer of an article in
Pauly-Wissowa (_Real-Encycl._ ii. 1870) in stating that
magistrates of this title were already at work in the earlier
part of the fifth century; the poet uses the noun in a general
sense from which it was afterwards specialized. Some of the
regulations recur at Rome (p. 137).

The municipal by-laws which these passages suggest clearly came into
use before, though perhaps not long before, the middle of the fourth
century. They do not directly concern town-planning; they involve