It may well have been from similar fears that in the following year the remainder of the Tarquins’ property was distributed among the people: “(bona regia) deripienda plebi sunt data[1182].” A few chapters later Livy states that so long as the banished Tarquin was still alive, the people received from the senate “multa blandimenta[1183].” The nobles are described by Dionysius as “taking many measures friendly to the poor, that they might not go over to the tyrants and be won over by considerations of personal gain and betray the commonwealth[1184].” The senate seems to have been fighting the Tarquins with their own weapons. The blandimenta that kept Superbus off the throne may well have been synonymous with the benignitas that got Priscus on to it. After the death of Tarquin at the court of the Greek tyrant at Cumae there were three prominent Romans who rightly or wrongly were suspected of aiming at the kingly power. It may be worth while examining in each of the three cases the circumstances that are said to have given rise to these suspicions. [Sidenote: Cassius and his exceptional financial position;] Spurius Cassius[1185] is not described as having been personally very rich, and our authors introduce into their accounts of him nothing to support the charge that he was aiming at overthrowing the existing government. They leave it possible to conceive of him as a constitutional reformer who when consul sought to relieve a widespread distress by distributions of land[1186] and perhaps corn[1187] and by taking the state finances into his own hands[1188]. The outcry against him is made to come mainly from the landed classes who fear that his proposals may touch their own pockets. As far as they are thinking about the constitution it is the financial position that the consul has created for himself that is the chief ground of their alarms. “By his distributions of money the consul was erecting a power perilous to liberty: ... the way was being paved to monarchy.” Later on we find Cassius having money dealings with the people. He proposes that the sums that they have paid the government for corn brought from Sicily in time of famine should be refunded to them: “but this was looked on by the plebeians as a cash payment for the throne, and refused.” Though there is nothing to show that the Cassius of Livy and Dionysius had either the desire or the real equipment to repeat the career of Tarquinius Priscus, yet the narrative about him is none the less relevant. It depicts the early republican as deeply alarmed at any individual who secures any kind of financial predominance in the state. Very possibly this feeling may account for the ostentatious exhibition of poverty in which early republican nobles are so often depicted as indulging[1189]. [Sidenote: Maelius and his exceptional wealth and organized body of clients.]