I haven't seen them mentioned much yet. Miners were an interesting lot. Egypt used prisoners of war and criminals for this (as well as slaves) to work under their experienced personnel. Most early copper mines were in the surface soil, rather than underground. Egyptians also mined for alum deposits underground in ankle deep water. I wrote a post on this in Egypt long ago. Asia Minor and (I think) Greece used children (they fit better in tiny spaces).

An excellent, though not very promising, career choice for a productive writer would be as a slave. They could write about the day-to-day drudgery of mining, rowing, farming, etc. Then when they ran dry on material to write about, they could post that they've been sold from the ship, to a farmer, or will be facing the horrible odors of tanning leather, and have new material to write. The general term, slave, could be used for so many jobs. Anybody want to harvest Murex snails from the ocean for royal purple dye? Binding wet rawhide onto new chariots? Making mud bricks for city walls?