Cornelia saw her as a woman very beautiful, very wilful, gifted with every talent, yet utterly lacking that moral stability which would have been the crown of a perfect human organism.
The two women had grown more and more in friendship and intimacy; and when Cornelia studied in detail the dark, and often hideous, coils and twistings of the history of the Hellenistic royal families, the more vividly she realized that Cleopatra was the heiress of generations of legalized license,[181] of cultured sensuality, of veneered cruelty, and sheer blood-thirstiness.

Therefore Cornelia had pitied, not blamed, the queen, and, now that misfortune had fallen upon her, was distressed for the plight of Cleopatra.
[181] As, for instance, the repeated wedlock of brothers and sisters among the Ptolemies.
That Cornelia had been an intimate of the queen was perfectly well known in Alexandria.

In fact, Cleomenes himself was of sufficiently high rank to make any guest he might long entertain more or less of a public personage.

Cornelia was a familiar sight to the crowds, as she drove daily on the streets and attended the theatre.

Cleomenes began to entertain suspicions that the new government was not quite pleased to leave such a friend of Cleopatra's at liberty; and Agias took pains to discover that Pratinas was deep in the counsels of the virtual regent--Pothinus.