vestal virgins

“The vestal virgins became nuns of the church; the Sacerdotes, her priests; the mysteries of Isis, her Agapae.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer

““That emperor,” says Symmachus, “suffered the privileges of the vestal virgins to remain inviolate; he bestowed the sacerdotal dignities on the nobles of Rome, granted the customary allowance to defray the expenses of the public rites and sacrifices; and, though he had embraced a different religion, he never attempted to deprive the empire of the sacred worship of antiquity.””

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire