Porcius Cato. 1 With these three groups were linked in some fashion or other almost all the chief members of the government, the principes viri of note during the first decade of its existence. […] They were members of his own class: he had not wished to make war upon them or to exterminate the Roman aristocracy. […] PageBook=>058 oligarchy could survive if its members refused to abide by the rules, to respect ‘liberty and the laws’. […] Provincials, freedmen or centurions, their proportion must have been tiny in an assembly that now numbered about nine hundred members. […] Many of its most prominent members were neutral, evasive, playing their own game or bound to Antonius; and some of the best of the Caesarian military men were absent in the provinces.