She was their companion and the ornament of their banquets; she was entrusted with the secret of all the Vatican intrigues which had any connection with the future of the Borgias, and all her vital interests were soon to be concentrated there.
Never, even in the later years of her life, does she appear as a woman of unusual genius; she had none of the characteristics of the _viragos_ Catarina Sforza and Ginevra Bentivoglio; nor did she possess the deceitful soul of an Isotta da Rimini, or the spirituelle genius of Isabella Gonzaga.

If she had not been the daughter of Alexander VI and the sister of Caesar Borgia, she would have been unnoticed by the historians of her age or, at most, would have been mentioned only as one of the many charming women who constituted the society of Rome.

In the hands of her father and her brother, however, she became the tool and also the victim of their political machinations, against which she had not the strength to make any resistance.
FOOTNOTES: [37] This information is given by Marino Sanuto, Venuta di Carlo VIII, in Italia; original in the Paris library, also a copy in the Marciana.
He calls Giulia "favorita del Pontefice, di eta giovane, et bellissima savia accorda et mansueta." [38] According to one of Brognolo's despatches (Mantuan archives) Giulia and Adriana returned December 1st, on which date Pandolfo Collenuccio, who was in Rome, wrote, "Una optima novella ce e per alcuno.

Che Ma Julia si e recuperata, et ando Messer Joan Marrades per Lei.

Et e venuta in Roma: e dicesi, che Domenica de nocte allogio in Palazzo." Archives of Modena.
[39] Despatch of Giacomo Trotti, Milan, December 21, 1494.