It is nowhere explicitly stated that it was to this control of the free labour of the city that the Tarquins owed their power. On the contrary, according to Livy the populares helped to turn Superbus out for the very reason that he had forced them into this banausic life. “They were indignant that they had been kept by the king so long employed as smiths and doing the work of slaves[1170].” This by itself would certainly suggest that the Tarquins had used their kingly power to turn the free men of Rome into artizans and quarrymen, and not their army of employees to turn a capitalist into a king. But the smiths summoned from Etruria, who are associated with the Roman plebeians, recall the “large number of skilled workmen” mentioned by Strabo as working for Demaratus at Tarquinii, and suggest that we have here a continuation of the activities that had made the fortune of the Tarquin family while still in Etruria[1171]. [Sidenote: He loses the throne when he can no longer pay these employees.] There is a further statement in the same chapter of Livy that certainly harmonizes better with this latter alternative. At the time when the plebeians suddenly discovered the degrading nature of their occupations, not apparently without the help of the abler members of the nobility, Livy informs us that the king had run out of money, “exhausted by the magnificence of his public works.” Similarly Dionysius makes Brutus urge on his fellow-conspirators that now is the time to carry out their plot, when the armed citizens are “no longer controlled by (Tarquin’s) presents as formerly[1172].” That Tarquin’s regime was one of sweat and wages but never of blood and iron is borne out by Cicero, who observes that “we never hear of Tarquin’s putting Roman citizens to death[1173].” Later writers speak of Superbus as employing penal labour and various forms of torture and intimidation on a large scale[1174]. But these statements, which have plainly a common origin, are no less plainly embroideries upon the aristocratic misrepresentations of the Tarquins’ labour policy. The truth is expressed by Florus: “in senatum caedibus, in omnes superbia, quae crudelitate grauior est bonis, grassatus[1175].” In other words Superbus was a harsh and unpopular employer[1176]. This personal unpopularity must have contributed along with the exhaustion of the royal treasury to reconcile the common people to the republican regime, which for them was certainly the beginning of an era of oppression and misery, since they had lost in the king their natural protector[1177]. [Sidenote: Suspected attempts at restoring the kingship:]