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From: "Terrence Lockyer" <lockyert@mweb.co.za>
To: "Classics List" <classics@u.washington.edu>
Subject: insurance (maybe not)
Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2001 06:57:07 +0200
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On Wed, 14 Nov 2001, Gene O'Grady wrote

: Paul Millett in "Maritime loans and the structure of credit
: in fourth century Athens," in Trade in the Ancient Economy,
: ed. Garnsey Hopkins & Whittaker, seems to question the
: idea that the maritime loans in fact constituted a form of
: insurance as argued, e.g., in Finley's Sather lectures, in
: part because the traders involved apparently always sailed
: with their ships, "so there was always a good chance that
: they would go down with it, making the question of insurance
: irrelevant."

I am not sure how we could know that "the traders involved ... always sailed
with their ships", but even if they did, this particular objection would not
be insurmountable.  Survival of shipwreck is a feature of Greco-Roman
literature from the *Odyssey* onwards, and for the principal characters of
the novels becomes something of an occupational hazard, so it would not seem
to have been considered inherently impossible.  At Petronius, *Satyrica*
103, the shaving of heads apparently recalls "naufragorum ultimum votum",
and at Juvenal 12.81-2, sailors shave their heads and relate their escape,
so there may be evidence of specific beliefs concerning omens of, and
practices related to, survival of shipwreck (although Michele Ronnick has
argued, at *Scholia* ns 4 [1995] 105-7, that the sailors in Juvenal are
worshippers of Isis and that their shaven heads relate to that, rather than
specifically to a narrow escape from shipwreck).

Returning to reality, it is possible to imagine a variety of circumstances
in which a ship and its cargo might be lost, but not (all of) its crew, such
as running aground or loss in coastal waters.  I seem to recall that many
ancient vessels, unlike modern ones, would be more likely to break up on the
surface, rather than sink, and I should think that would also increase the
chances of survival, especially close to shore, as would sailing in numbers.
The generals at Arginousai were blamed not for losing ships, but for failing

to rescue survivors of their loss, so that even in a battle situation, there
seems to have been some expectation that the shipwrecked might be saved.

A "good chance" of going down with the ship is not a certainty, and maritime
loans may well have had some of the effect of insurance in mitigating the
calamity of shipwreck by spreading the risk and not compounding the loss of
ship and/or cargo with substantial financial loss or potential ruin (which
must surely have been a real possibility had the non-repayment clause not
been attached).


Terrence Lockyer
Johannesburg, South Africa

.