From small fishermen to tradesmen, port societies werecomposed of a broad range of occupations, whichbrought differing levels of income and prestige tothose who practised them. Literary sources onlymention a limited number of port activities, oftensituated at both ends of the social hierarchy, inparticular the traders at the top and the fishermenat the bottom. Epigraphic sources allow us to bemore specific about this hierarchy. First, far frombeing generalizing, they refer to particular portcontexts, even if all the information is notavailable. Moreover, the inscriptions were oftencreated by professionals themselves or by people whowere in contact with them and who probably knew thembetter than the élite who wrote about them. Theinscriptions also have the advantage of using aprecise vocabulary that allows us to know about theexistence of some activities that are unknown inliterary sources. This is an advantage, but it canalso be an inconvenience, because without anyreference in literature it is sometimes difficult toknow the exact meaning of the Latin words.Difficulties in determining the meaning of a wordcan also be encountered with well-documented words,like navicularius,something that makes us realize how important it isto take into account the contexts in which a word isemployed. The aim of this chapter is to try to findclues for hierarchical relationships betweendifferent attested occupations. Are there anyactivities that are more prestigious than others, orthat allow their members a better degree of socialmobility? Alternatively, do some activities condemnthose who practise them to remain at the bottom ofthe social scale? Is the hierarchy of occupationsidentical at each port?