An aristocrat, cultured, bookish, he would have liked to live freely among books; but he was not wealthy, and he too had to bear the cross of court life, as secretary and tutor in the household of Monsignor Gaddi first, then as secretary to Cardinal Farnese from 1542; and only at the end, and for a short time, could he enjoy the longed-for good of freedom. In the classical languages he was as skilled as any humanist, and particularly inclined to write prose; and since by then Pietro Aretino’s advertising genius had launched and popularized the literary genre of “vernacular letters,” it is no surprise that the highly elaborate letters he wrote either for himself or for his patron, once known and perhaps made famous, tempted publishers (or, as they were then called, “booksellers”) for their “collections.”
Tormented by the demon of perfection, intolerant of banal or compromising company, he could not but disdain such a literary genre, or at least its conventions; yet in the end he too yielded; but the collection amounted to four hundred letters, all highly elaborate and perfect (perhaps too perfect), and it appeared posthumously in Venice with the Manuzios (1572–73). Unlike Aretino’s, in these one senses, and perhaps deplores, an excess of discretion, and thus, one must admit, of interest. Yet what marvels of language and style (even with a faint aroma of pedantry) in all six hundred or so that later centuries added to the first four hundred! If one considers that an exquisitely refined taste prevails here almost to the same degree as the two opposing prejudices—imitation and popularity—it may be said that modern Italian prose begins with them. Moreover, Caro anticipates that type of writer who would become characteristic of Italy, and not only of Italy, down to the Romantic age and beyond.
A dyed-in-the-wool academician, when he set out to satirize the Academy no one surpassed him; covertly or openly he collaborated with others in pruning Aristotle’s Poetics to distill and refine the neoclassical decalogue; but for it, and in mockery of its authors, he had ready in his drawer the Commento di Ser Agreste and La Navea ovvero dei Nasi and other doggerel. As a humanist he was enthusiastic about antiquity, but now with a predominantly archaeological sensibility. It was also from this duality of temperament that the famous controversy with Castelvetro (q.v.) arose, which in the end amounted to little more than a clash between two grammarians, though with the (advantage or disadvantage) on his side of a linguistic sensitivity less scientific and more artistic.
In his final years he devoted himself to translating the *Aeneid* to display the richness and power of the Italian language. He died in a small villa at Tusculum on 17 November 1566 and was buried in Rome in the church of San Lorenzo in Damaso.
Among Caro’s works: *Scritti scelti*, with an introduction by V. Ciani and commentary by E. Spadolini (Milan 1912); F. Pastonchi, *Le più belle pagine di A. C.* (ibid. 1923).