Nothing is known of Flavius Caper’s life. His literary activity is dated approximately to the years around 200 CE: Julius Romanus, who lived in the second half of the third century, and who has many extracts preserved in Charisius, is in fact the first to mention Caper, who in turn used material from Probus and Pliny. Pompeius (GL V 154, 13) calls him magister Augusti Caesaris, but unfortunately it is impossible to establish his identity. None of Caper’s work has arrived with us directly: the two short treatises De orthographia and De verbis dubiis, attributed to Caper in the manuscripts edited by H. Keil in the Grammatici Latini (VII 92-112), are more recent compilations that blend materials of diverse origins, which are only in some cases attributable to the second-century grammarian. Titles and fragments of the true Flavius Caper are preserved (Keil 1889) in one De Latinitate and in one De dubiis generibus, which belong to the tradition of orthoepical and orthographical treatises, and are rich in linguistic materials from which later grammarians drew. Priscian (GL II 188, 22) describes him as a doctissimus antiquitatis perscrutator but, following in Pliny’s wake, Caper was particularly attentive to the use of auctores along a rather broad chronological spectrum: if he conceded to his own preference for the veteres as the guarantors of latinitas, he was nevertheless also interested in more recent linguistic phenomena and did not hesitate to include examples from iuniores authors, such as Cornelius Severus, Tibullus, Persius, Lucan, and Martial  (De Nonno 1990, 638; De Paolis 2014). According to Agroecius (GL VII 113, 11-12 (in commentando etiam Cicerone praecipuus), whose testimony is corroborated by Pompeius (GL V 154, 13-14), Flavius Caper could also be the author of a commentary on Cicero (thus Schmidt 1997, followed by De Paolis 2000, 58, n. 58; contra Goetz, in RE, s.v. Caper). F. Rutella advanced the hypothesis in 1977 that there were two grammarians of the same name, the Flavius Caper of the second century and another Caper of a later period, who was the author of the two booklets. This hypothesis was accepted by Pintus 2006-2007, 148, n. 6, but its factuality is unlikely, as there is not sufficient support from the tradition’s data (De Paolis 2012, 185, n. 42). [M. Callipo tr. C. Belanger]