Conversely, risk and financing of sea voyages delayed utilisation of the lateen rig sail -- the triangular sail familiar on sloops, as opposed to older square-rig designs -- until about the 13th century.
This risk-aversion actually increased risks and costs of sailing: shipping could only occur from March through November, even across the relatively calm waters of the Mediterranean, and ships could only sail before the wind, not into it.
There's a brief discussion of this in James Burke's Connections (1977), though I'd expect more complete coverage in his sources.
This makes me think of financing and risk controls and their effects over technology adoption.
The classic work on the history of marine insurance is "Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk" by Bernstein. This is heavily oriented towards Lloyds of London. It doesn't trace insurance back to the Romans.
Plowing through the reference to Temin[1], there's a long discussion of wheat distribution in Rome. Too much regression analysis applied to too little data. Temen then recaps Economics 101 at some length.
After jumping around through history, Temin finally focuses on the Roman era. He writes "The Roman “company” was a sophisticated information-sharing institution.", but says little about what a "company" meant. The Romans never invented the concept of the corporation. They got close. They never developed ongoing non-state institutions bigger than a rich individual. There were transient organizations such as venture groups, ("societas") where a group of people bought shares in a plan to send a ship somewhere and profit from the trade. The venture dissolved at the end of the voyage when the parties were paid off. (This is where the term "venture capital" comes from.) This is risk-sharing, but not insurance. There was something called a "societates publicanorum", which was close to a corporation, but more like a limited partnership. But the historical references are thin and questionable.[2] Those may have been special-purpose entities involved with the Roman government for tax farming.
The Romans definitely had loans, and to some extent, had banks. The Temple of Apollo sold mortgages. They had the concept of agency, in the legal sense we use today. But the best-known bank of the era (because some of their records have survived)[3], the Sulpicii, was a family business.
None of these references describe an independent insurer. That would be one who, for an agreed fee, will cover a loss, but isn't otherwise involved in the business. The Romans don't seem to have gotten that far.
Rhodes had the Lex Rhodia (which included a provision granting 'general average'); a sort of group-based insurance scheme for differing ventures to compensate those among the group whose ships were lost. So the concept did indeed exist in (or at least before) Roman times.
The Romans also had life insurance, so the concept of insurance was there.
Genoa most certainly had banking houses issuing insurance and loans -- and their rivals in Venice did as well (but that was more state-oriented and derived). However, I'd agree that there doesn't seem to be much evidence towards institutional insuring in Rome.
This risk-aversion actually increased risks and costs of sailing: shipping could only occur from March through November, even across the relatively calm waters of the Mediterranean, and ships could only sail before the wind, not into it.
There's a brief discussion of this in James Burke's Connections (1977), though I'd expect more complete coverage in his sources.
This makes me think of financing and risk controls and their effects over technology adoption.