The professional incomes of doctors in ancient Greece and Rome varied greatly as at the present day. A few were paid very large fees, but the rank and file did not make more money than was equal to keeping them in decency.

Seleucus paid Erasistratus about £20,000 for curing his son Antiochus. Herodotus mentions that the Æginetans (532 B.C.) paid Democedes, from the public treasury, £304 a year; the Athenians afterwards paid him £406 a year, and at Samos he received £422 yearly. Pliny says that Albutius, Arruntius, Calpetanus, Cassius and Rubrius each made close upon £2,000 a year, and that Quintus Stertinius favoured the Emperor by accepting about £4,000 a year when he could have made more in private practice. The surgeon Alcon made a fortune of nearly £100,000 by a few years' practice in Gaul. Pliny states that Manlius Cornutus paid his doctor £2,000 for curing him of a skin disease, and Galen's fee for curing the wife of a consul was about £400 of our money.