Career
The exact time and place of his birth are unknown, but the period of his literary activity was between AD 211 and 222. Elagabalus (also known as Heliogabalus) banished him from Rome, but on the accession of Severus Alexander (222) he was reinstated, and finally became the emperor"s chief adviser and praefectus praetorio. His curtailment of the privileges granted to the Praetorian Guard by Elagabalus provoked their enmity, and he narrowly escaped their vengeance.
Ultimately he was murdered in the palace, in the course of a riot between the soldiers and the mob.
lieutenant had been assumed for a long time that Ulpian of Tyre was a model for Athenaeus" Ulpian in The Deipnosophists — or The Banquet of the Learned. Athenaeus makes "Ulpian" out to be a grammarian and philologist, characterised by his customary interjections: "Where does this word occur in writing?".
He is represented as a symposiarch and he occupies a couch alone. His death is passed over in silence in Book XV 686 c.
Scholars today agree that Athenaeus"s Ulpian is not the historical Ulpian, but possibly his father.
The date of the real Ulpian"s death in 223 AD. has been wrongly used to estimate the date of completion of The Deipnosophists. In the study of Law, he is mostly remembered for the phrase "Juris praecepta sunt haec: honeste vivere, alterum non laedere, suum cuique tribuere", which may be translated as: "Such are the principles of the Law: live honestly, do not offend others, give to each person what is due".