Reference edition:

Agroecius, Ars de orthographia, a cura di M. Pugliarello, Milano 1978.

The work is presented as a supplement (quaedam adicienda subieci) to Flavius Caper’s De orthographia et de proprietate ac differentia sermonum. Agroecius’ stated objective is to explain difficult phenomena that Caper had deemed too simple to warrant full treatment; for this reason, his work must have addressed a public that struggled to understand Caper’s work.  The work is an example of differentiae verborum, in which words that are very similar in pronunciation are clearly distinguished through a contrastive procedure that seeks to highlight confusion between vowel sounds, especially those at the end of words (Perret). Perhaps most important is the author’s reference to the correct orthography of his own name: Agroecius, cum Latine scribas, per diphthongon scribendum, non, ut quidam putant, per ‘i’ Agricius; indeed, it is also possible that this is a veiled reference to Ausonius, who in Prof. 15 identifies a certain rhetor as Censorius Atticus Agricius. In a similar way, Agroecius’ lists of words demonstrate how the proper meaning of some terms was becoming obscure during the period in which he wrote, e.g. apparet qui videtur, adparet qui obsequitur, non regulae ratione, sed discernendi intellectus gratia.  [A. Balbo; tr. C. L. Caterine].