Work, Jobs & Careers in Ancient Rome: Children Working in the Mines continued

Surface mining involved working softer stone from deposits found on the surface whilst underground gallery mining was either started directly in the mountain face as the result of following a vein of ore discovered in a surface pit. Mining was grueling and children were particularly vunerable. Lamps to check for vapours as they dug - when the oxygen levels dropped the oil lamps would extinguish; thus shifts were determined by oil lamps. The pieces of ore which were carried to the surface by the children were washed, broken and ground by women, older men and children.

Parts of the second century A.D. Lex Metallis Vipascensis, which was a regulatory code for procedure in mining communities, refers to workers, including children concerning their access to the Baths. The regulatory code also makes references to teachers in the community, confirming that there was access to education.

Work, Jobs & Careers in Ancient Rome: Doctors continued:

Martial in his Epigrams refers to a doctor's visit:

"I felt a little ill and called Dr. Symmachus. Well, you came, Symmachus, but you brought 100 medical students with you. One hundred ice-cold hands poked and jabbed me. I did not have a fever, Symmachus, when I called you – but now I do. (Ep. 5.9) "

Pliny the Elder in his Natural History writes that ' Our ancestors did not condemn the act of healing, but rather the pursuit of medicine as a profession; in particular they refused to believe that profit should be made from saving lives'. Pliny expressed his own concerns of the Greek attitude toward medicine, an attitude he worried that the Romans were adopting.  At present, he states, that of all the Greek sciences it is only medicine that has not yet gained wide interest among 'us serious-minded Romans', he adds that very few are being attracted by the professions considerable monetary rewards and those who are, he complains immediately, begin to act like Greeks. Medical writers, unless they write in Greek , are not accepted as authorities even by the ignorant or by those who do not know Greek.

It was common for ancient doctors to first study philosophy, since medicine required theorising and experimenting. Roman students in Athens studying in the philosophical schools such as Socrates and Aristotle may have found that their courses included knowledge on medical healing drugs; Aristotle's students wrote rationalised accounts of psychiactive drugs. 

Medical schools/centres where teachers delivered the lectures, in the imperial period were situated in the Greek world. The Greeks has more or less the monopoly on medicine. In the treatiseIntroductio ad medicina, it is advised that medical training started when a youth was about fifteen; the length of times cited for these studies is anything between six months and six years. There were two types of physicians, 'simple' doctors' (iatroi), a small number of these belonged to the municipal elite; the other doctors (archiatroi) were officially recognised as city physicians.

Generally doctors did originate from the elites of Roman society. Many doctors had Greek names and many were traveling physicians. Young doctors belong mostly to the lower levels of society and included imperial slaves, free-born women and freedwomen.