In just this way opposition to the orientalizing of the imperial religion produced the reactionary reforms of Augustus, and much later opposition to an excessive clerical interference with life expressed itself in the very real paganism of the Italian Renaissance. In all these instances the attempt was deliberately made to rebuild with material still present, even if largely discarded, a structure that had fallen into ruins. The success of such movements depends wholly on the amount of material still present. If it has to be painfully gathered and swept together from forgotten corners, success is more than problematic. The Jewish reactionaries were fortunate in that the ancient institutions still held their ground, and in having no huge gap of disuse to fill. They were also fortunate that the actively Hellenizing party was limited in numbers, and the line of demarcation was the easily noticeable one of wealth and position. Not all men of wealth were in this class. Such a man as Ben Sira, in whose book some have detected Greek elements, betrays no Hellenizing tendencies.[123] He is Jew to the marrow, and he can be no isolated phenomenon. But there had been a rapid growth of a moneyed class, and this not so much composed of great landowners as of the newer class of capitalists, who grew rich through the various forms of financial speculation then open, particularly the tax-farmers, of whom that magnificent vulture, the Tobiad Joseph, is a permanent type.[124] The life of these men involved such an association with king and court that marked discrepancies of social custom, such as dietary regulations, or any form of abstinence, as well as differences in dress, were not to be thought of. It is unfortunate that any discussion of the nature and character of the opposition involves a controversial question of the first magnitude, that which concerns the Hasidim, or ʽAssidaei. It were idle to enumerate, much less to examine critically, the theories that have been advanced. Our evidence is so scanty that it can be made to fit into many different schemes, all of which can be shown to be conceivable. The simplest interpretation of the extant sources however is by far the best, and it has further the merit of being the longest-established and most widely current. Now concerning the Hasidim we have only three passages that can be considered even approximately contemporary, two in the First Book of Maccabees and one in the Second.