The claim of an individual to assure his health and life, to assume and compensate the damage from diseases and accidents, had already appeared in the system of the ancient Roman law in the form of many singular legal institutions. In lack of a unified archetype of regulation, we have to analyse the damages caused in the health or corporal integrity of different personal groups: we have to mention the legal interpretation of the diseases or injuries suffered by serves, people under manus or patria potestas and free Roman citizens. The fragments from the Digest od Justinian do not only demonstrate concrete legal problems, but they can serve as a starting point for further theoretical analyses. For example: if death is the consequence of a medical failure, does the doctor have any kind of liability? Was after-care part of the healing process according to the Roman law? Examining these questions, we should not forget to talk about the complex liability system of the Roman law, the compensation of the damages caused in a contractual or delictual context and about the lex Aquilia. Although these conclusions have no direct relation with the present legal regulation of risk assumption, we have to see that analysing the examples of the Roman law can be useful for developing our view of a certain theoretical problem, like that of the modern liability concept in medicine as well.

With the explosion of insurance contracts in the last two hundred years both in Europe and around the rest of the world, there is a temptation to think that the financing and insuring on projects on limited or non-recourse terms is a relatively novel concept. This is, however, far from being true. Indeed, there is an early evidence of project financing techniques and insurance contracts being actively used during the ancient times. The first examples come from the Roman law but there are similar legal institutions even in the ancient Greek legal system. - The essay analyses the legal history of assurances on lives and health in the Roman law, especially the question of the collegium tenuiorum and the collegium funeraticium. In the centre of the studies are the analyses of their legal personality, the changes in the regulation concerning their foundation, the purpose and the internal organisation. The treatment of the main topics begins with fragments from the material of the Corpus Iuris Civilis by Justinian. After that the views of the most important authors and the contemporary investigations in the Roman law found the statements of the paper. - As a result of these analyses we can see the process of development in the ancient legal systems, especially in the Roman law. And although these results have no immediate influence on the present legal regulation, it can demonstrate original tendencies in the field of insurances. This way we can prove that the Roman law is a still existing basis for the development in contractual law.