EXERCITOR AND MAGISTER NAVIS IN ROMAN LAW

Abstract

The legal position of the owner of a vessel (exercitor navis) and the captain of a vessel (magister navis), was not always precisely defined in Roman law. A number of factors had an influence on it, and the most important one was the development of the maritime trade itself, which had a direct impact on this issue. At the beginning of its development, taking into account its insufficiently developed navigation, it is clear that there was no need for defining the legal position of the owner of a vessel and the captain of a vessel and establishing the difference between them. Since the navigation was primitive in the first phases of the development of maritime sailing, it was necessary for the owner of a vessel to monitor his vessel during a journey and look after all the goods he was entrusted with and passengers who were transported. With the development of maritime trade, especially in the classical period, they started to perceive the owner and the captain of a vessel as two separate roles, which necessarily required clearly and precisely defining their legal position, i.e. the clear distinction of the rights and obligations of a person who was the owner of a vessel and a person who was entrusted with operating the vessel. In the postclassical period, with the general decadence which was omnipresent in the Roman society, the decadence in the navigation itself occurred, which caused a number of negative reflections, one of which was merging the roles of the owner and the captain of a vesselin one person again. In order to better understand the positive effects of the situation when the owner of a ship was also the captain of that ship in the period of the late republic, as well as the negative effects of the same merging of the roles which occurred in the Dominate period, this study is going to deal with the question of the legal position of exercitor and magister navis during three periods of the development of Roman law: the last centuries of the late republic, the classical period and the postclassical period.