I'm reading a book on the history of corporations and it turns out that the first instance of it was indeed in Ancient Rome
The Roman state, once it started to incorporate large swaths of land, had a very small bureaucracy and couldn't administrate without it
So it delegated it
In a conflict with Carthage, Rome needed to supply its troops and didn't have the means to do so.
The senate decided to contract one of the three major business owners of Rome to do so and paid them handsomely, thus creating the corporation
In what became known as societas, this proto-corporation was given state legitimacy and an early form of limited liability.
Without the bureaucratic machinery, Ancient Rome was unable to collect taxes so it also used these societas to do so the Roman state told these company owners the amount of taxes they needed from the various provinces within the empire and then told them to collect that amouont plus whatever fee they decided to put on top of it, thus allowing these companies to get wealthy, legally skimming
The next instance of proto-corporation came with the Medici family in Florence
This bank was one of the first truly multi-national corporations that grew rapidly by being able to give customers a piece of paper they could use to withdraw money in another city at a bank branch
In order to do this, the bank had to develop a corporate structure that furthered the ability to have limited liability when it comes to operations, i.e. when something bad happened the people who owned the bank weren't liable for damages, only the company was liable
The next evolution of the corporation was in England with the East India Company and had to do with the tricky nuances of how corporations could raise money from investors and what that meant in terms of ownership of the company.
Thus the concept of stock developed
With stock, investors were able to give the corporation money and in return were able to reap the profits from the endeavors of the company all while retaining limited liability.
In addition, this move severed ownership of the company from the management of the company
No longer did ownership of a company require management of a company and from this point, management of a corporation was relegated to professional operators who were mostly outside the effective control of the stockholders except during board member elections
As with most brilliant abstractions that humans have created throughout time, there are usually very good reasons for creating them. The corporation, while having many ethical downsides, also has coordinated human activity in ways that our ancestors would have considered magic