I, Sesames the potter, have bought through the board of magistrates this burial vault for myself and my wife Elpis and my mother-in-law Euphrosyne and for Ianoarios and our children, and for Soterichos my father-in-law. No one else shall be buried here, since (the violator) shall pay to the sacred treasurer 1500 denarii.
Σ)ησάμας κεραμεὺς ὠνησάμην διὰ τῶν ἀρχείων τὸν πυργίσκον ἑαυτῷ καὶ γυναικί μου Ἐλπίδι καὶ (τῇ) πενθερ(ίδι μου) Εὐφροσύνῃ κ(αὶ) Ἰανοαρίῳ καὶ τ(έ)κνοις ἡ(μῶν) καὶ Σωτηρίχῳ τῷ πενθε(ρῷ). ἑτέρῳ δὲ οὐδενὶ ἐξέσται (τεθ)ῆναι. ἐπεὶ ἀ(πο)(τ)είσει τῷ (ἱερωτάτῳ ταμε(ί)ῳ δηναρία α̅φ̅.
These inscriptions of dedications show that potters sometimes became people of means and influence.
Plato, Republic, p. 467 a.
Did you never observe in the arts how the potters’ boys look on and help, long before they touch the wheel? (Jowett).
Ἢ οὐκ ᾔσθησαι τὰ περὶ τὰς τέχνας, οἷον τοὺς τῶν κεραμέων παῖδας, ὡς πολὺν χρόνον διακονοῦντες θεωροῦσι πρὶν ἅπτεσθαι τοῦ κεραμεύειν;
Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, II, 17, 3.
... For what man is there so bereft, I will not say of learning, but of sense, that he thinks that there is an art of constructing and of weaving, and of making vases from clay, but that rhetoric, that greatest and noblest work, as I said above, has risen to such sublime heights without art?
... nam quis est adeo non ab eruditione modo, sed a sensu remotus hominis, ut fabricandi quidem et texendi et e luto vasa ducendi artem putet, rhetoricen autem, maximum ac pulcherrimum, ut supra diximus, opus, in tam sublime fastigium existimet sine arte venisse?