It was probably, however, in the first half of the fourth century that the Greek cities began to pass by-laws relating to the police, the scavenging and the general public order of their markets and streets, and to establish Agoranomi to control the markets and Astynomi to 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 building regulations only as one among many subjects, and those regulations are such as might be, and in many cases have been, adopted where town-planning was unknown. But they are natural forerunners of an interest in town-planning. As in modern England, so in fourth-century Greece, their appearance suggests the growth of a care for well-ordered town life and for municipal well-being which leads directly to a more elaborate and methodical oversight of the town as an organized combination of houses and groups of houses.