Children at Work

Freeborn children of the lower levels of society worked from an early age to help and support their parents and family.

Archaeological primary sources such as funerary stones give some indication of the type of work children may have done. Children remembered by their families (those who could afford to have a funerary stone), refer to their work in text and/or imagery.

Links

It takes a little time to work through this site but it is invaluable for the detail and images it provides on funerary stones in general. This site looks at Roman Britain.

https://romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/inscriptions/search?qv=children&submit=

Trades

• Children trained in the trades.Training began early they took on apprenticeships as goldsmiths (CIL 9437), hairdressers (CIL 6.9726), mirror makers.
• Other children might work in farming or in the domestic sphere, or cloth production or in the mining industry.

Children Working in the Mines

Due to their size children were indispensable for certain tasks in the mining industry. Some shafts and galleries on excavated Roman mines are so low and narrow only children could have worked here; children would make their way down shafts to collect rock and bring it to the surface.   LEARN MORE

Work and 'Careers' in Ancient Rome

Doctors

Any person could refer to himself as a doctor in ancient Rome; there were no formal requirements. Pliny the Elder reports that medicine is the only profession where any man off the street gains our trust if he purports to be a doctor, and surely, Pliny adds such a situation is so dangerous. There are no laws against this he continues; such doctors risk lives while they are learning and yet, for doctors, and only doctors, there is no penalty for killing a person.  

If one's methods were successful then that drew patients, if a not a change of career was advisable. The poet, Martial, in his Epigrams remarks of one such character

"Until recently, Diaulus was doctor; now he is an undertaker. He is still doing, as an undertaker, what he used to do as a doctor."

Due to the fact that cure rates were low Roman society was very skeptical of doctors. Many of the doctors were freedmen and the social standing of doctors was quite low; CIL 11.5400 names a freedman Publius Decimus Eros Merula, the freedman of Publius who was as a physican, surgeon and occulist.

There would have existed skilled and conscientous doctors who worked very hard to diagnose and cure their patients' illnesses but without doubt there would have existed many charlatans. The training of a doctor might have consisted in some cases, of a young would-be doctor shadowing another experienced doctor in order to learn one's profession. LEARN MORE