Legal Structure of Sea Loan in Roman Law

Sea loan or pecunia traiecticia belongs to the heritage of Roman legal thought. It seems to occupy in the conceptual framework of private law a specific position which few researchers are interested to investigate. One of them is Z. Benincasa who has analyzed the topic in her general work on risk in the maritime journeys till the II century AD. Present article was inspired by her book, however it is also the consequence of own studies on sea loan not only in the ancient Roman law but also in medieval, modern and contemporary legal thought. Thanks to broad insight into the history of sea loan it was possible to take up an approach which was only mentioned before. Namely, Roman sea loan seems to operate in the similar way as today's Project Finance. It was reasonable to start the broad comparison again from ancient Roman law. Present work uncovers some important characteristics of pecunia traiecticia. First of all, sea loan served not only as a method of taking over the risk by creditor, but also was a kind of speculative investment and opportunity to gain a great profit from maritime trade. At the same it enabled debtor to organize the risky journey. There were two kinds of sea loan. One was a loan under the condition that debtor will successfully reach the port of destination. The other one was a loan with the same condition, but there was added the time limit to the loan, e.g. 200 days of navigation – so called dies incertus sensu stricto. Secondly, the profit of creditor was strictly attached to the gains from maritime trade and depended on the success of the maritime journey. On the one hand, debtors personal liability was moved as further as possible, in order to satisfy creditor firstly from the things brought from the trade expedition. On the other hand, there was a flexible way to enter into the contract, to attach high interests and finally to sue the debtor and his heirs. Thirdly, caesars were interested in sea loan and provided very balanced position of creditor and debtor. It can suggest that pecunia traiecticia was important for Roman economy, maybe the same as Project Finance for our times. Present work seeks to broaden the previous studies on the western legal tradition and Roman law and is an attempt to find out whether the Roman concept of sea loan is applicable also nowadays.