Publicola (3.1-3.2)

After this, other envoys came announcing that Tarquin abdicated his throne and ceased to wage war upon the city, but demanded for himself, his friends, and his kinsmen, their moneys and effects,[*] wherewith to maintain themselves in exile. Many were inclined to grant this favour, and Collatinus in particular joined in advocating it, but Brutus, a man of harsh and unyielding temper ran forth into the forum and denounced his colleague as a traitor, because he would bestow the means for waging war and maintaining tyranny on men to whom it were a terrible mistake to vote even a bare subsistence in exile.

And when an assembly of the citizens was held, the first to speak among them was Caius Minucius, a private man, who exhorted Brutus and advised the Romans to see to it that the treasures fought with them against the tyrants, rather than with the tyrants against them. However, the Romans decided that, since they had the liberty for which they were at war, they would not sacrifice peace for the sake of wealth, but cast this also out along with the tyrants.[*] Now the wealth, of course, was of very slight consequence to Tarquin, but the demand for it was at once a test of the people’s disposition and a means of instigating treachery among them.