My name is Cantinea Procla, and I am the freeborn daughter of the chief priest in the Temple of Isis in Pompeii. I grew up learning the rituals of Isis in that beautiful temple, and when I moved to Rome with my husband, the freedman Gaius Julius Hermes, I became a priestess of Isis here. I am so proud to serve the goddess in this temple, part of one of the most important sanctuaries of Isis in all the Roman world. I tend the altar of Isis just outside this temple, feed the sacred snake in the cista mystica, and faithfully carry out all the duties the priests here assign me. Because I am so proficient in the rituals of Isis, the priests have given me an important part to play in the spring festival of the navigium Isidis ("the sacred boat of Isis"), celebrated with a great procession through Rome to the Tiber on March 5, when my beneficient and all-powerful goddess gives her blessing to all the ships. I had a special sistrum made just for this festival, to symbolize the way my merciful and loving goddess has taken the Roman people to her bosom, just as the wolf on the top of my sistrum nurtured the twins Romulus and Remus.
My one great sorrow is that the fruitful mother Isis has never given us children, perhaps so that nothing will distract me from her service. My husband is proud of my devotion to Isis and has commissioned a marble altar that will honor my status as priestess when I die.
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