The Boys' and Girls' Pliny · the Elder Pliny
CHAPTER XVIII. WORKS IN POTTERY.
At Rome, and in our municipal towns, we still see many pediments of temples, wonderful for their workmanship, artistic merit and long duration, more deserving of our respect than gold, and certainly far less baneful. At the present day, even, in the midst of such wealth as we possess, we make our first libation at the sacrifice, not from murrhine vases or vessels of crystal, but from ladles made of earthenware. Bounteous beyond expression is the earth, if we consider in detail her various gifts. To omit all mention of the cereals, wine, fruits, herbs, shrubs, medicaments, and metals, bounties which she has lavished upon us, and which have already passed under our notice, her productions in the shape of pottery alone would more than suffice, in their variety, to satisfy our domestic wants; there are gutter-tiles of earthenware, vats for receiving wine, pipes for conveying water, conduits for supplying baths, baked tiles for roofs, bricks for foundations, and the productions of the potter's wheel; results, all of them, of an art, which induced King Numa to establish, as a seventh college, or association, that of the makers of earthenware. Many have chosen to be buried in coffins of earthenware. There was Varro himself, who was interred, in true Pythagorean style, in the midst of leaves of myrtle, olive, and black poplar; indeed, the greater part of mankind make use of earthen vases for this purpose. For the service of the table, the Samian pottery is even yet held in high esteem; and that of Arretium in Italy maintains its high character; while for their cups, and for those only, the manufactories of Surrentum, Asta, Pollentia, Saguntum in Spain, and Pergamus in Asia, are greatly esteemed.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.