Domitius Ulpianus (Ulpian)
Domitius Ulpianus (Ulpian)
Died 223 c.e.
Legal scholar
Trusted Counsel. Domitius Ulpianus (Ulpian) was from Tyre in modern Lebanon. He was one of the latest (and one of the greatest) of a series of lawyers in public service in the middle years of the Roman Empire. He served in several civil service posts, and, as praetorian prefect to the emperor Alexander Severus, he was responsible for imperial responses to judicial appeals that shaped the law of the time. As a legal scholar, he also wrote extensive treatises on such subjects as trusts, laws, and magistracies and commentaries on legal texts such as the praetor’s edict and Sabinus’s treatise on the civil law. These writings became authoritative, and Ulpian is the most frequently-quoted author in the eventual Digest of Justinian. He was killed during a mutiny of the Praetorian Guard in 223 C.E.
Sources
Bruce W. Frier, A Casebook on the Roman Law of Delict (Atlanta: Scholars, 1989).
Tony Honoré, “Domitius Ulpianus,” in The Oxford Classical Dictionary, edited by Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth, third edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 493.
James Muirhead, Historical Introduction to the Private Law of Rome (London: A. & C. Black, 1916).