The agrarian measures that appear so early in the narratives of the historians need not deceive us. As far as they are authentic they must have been either insincere or idealist[1195]. The republican nobility is painted from the first as teaching the distressed plebeians to look not for farms and allotments but for wars and prize money. The picture of the transfiguration of the plebeians into soldiers is completed in the narrative of the siege of Veii (406–396 B.C.), when pay for military service is introduced[1196] and war becomes a leading means of earning a livelihood[1197]. In short it would appear that the nobles ceased to dread a restoration of the monarchy otherwise than by armed force when and only when their government became the principal and most popular employer in the state. [Sidenote: cp. fifth century Athens.] The Alcmaeonidae at Athens put an end to the possibility of a revival of the tyranny (and incidentally to all respect for constructive manual labour) by instituting state payments for services as jurymen, sailors on warships, and the like. Conditions at Rome were in some ways very different from those at Athens. But the Roman nobles appear to have aimed at securing the same result as the Athenian by very similar means. How far this parallel holds, at least as between the extant narratives, may be illustrated from the history of the family that took the leading place in the early Roman republic. [Sidenote: The earlier Claudii and their anti-tyrannical policy.]