This inscription preserves the voice of a Roman woman, a freedwoman (see names) who probably lived during the 1-2 century CE. A widow of indeterminate age, she had sufficient means to pay for this marble tombstone and its lengthy epitaph, carefully carved in Roman capitals. While the words may have been composed by a hired writer, the details, such as their childhood affection, are singular enough to have been provided by Furia Spes herself. She closes the epitaph with the hope that her husband will want her to join him quickly, a sentiment often found on epitaphs and in literature, expressed by both husbands and wives as a testiment to their faithful union in married love (see particularly Ovid, Metamorphoses: Alcyone's lament to Ceyx in Book 11.694-707 and the prayer of Baucis and Philemon in Book 8.708-10). Although there is space beneath the epitaph for a further inscription, perhaps with the intention that her name (and body) would ultimately be joined with her husband's in a single tomb, the lowest portion of the stone remains blank. The text offers the usual challenges in that it lacks punctuation and reflects the style and syntax of colloquial speech.