Caesar Dapontes was born on Skopelos in 1714 and received his early education on the island. He had a checkered career as Secretary to Konstantinos and Ioannis Mavrokordatou, the sovereigns of Moldavia, before being thrown into prison in 1747 (for about 20 months) for his own irregularities and intrigues in the royal court.
After his release he remained in Constantinople and married for the second time, his first wife having died. He lost his second wife and their daughter two years later.
In 1753, disappointed by the unpleasant course of his life, he decided to become a monk. He took the name Kaesarios and lived for three years on the islet of Piperi (Pepper) close to Skopelos and in the Evangelistrias Monastery on Skopelos.
In 1757, he travelled to the Agios Oros (Holy Mount Athos) and was installed in the Xiropotamou Monastery.
During the following nine years he toured Greece and the areas close to the Danube carrying a fragment of the true cross to collect donations for the monastery. His life during this period was recounted in the narrative verse of the ‘Garden of Graces’ that was written in 1768 and is addressed to Alexandros Mavrokordato of Firari.
Dapontes was a copious writer. His work numbers many thousands of fifteen syllable verses, with religious, chronographic, or autobiographic content and generally with moral intentions. He writes with the positive elements of humour, wisdom, observation and insight. He published many books himself, but others remained as anecdotes on manuscripts.
Many of these anecdotes were published for the first time by Konstantinos Satha in the Medieval Library and by Emile Legrand in the Bibliothcque Grecque Vulgaire. An important note regarding the publishing of Dapontes' articles and manuscripts was placed at the end: a warning (penance) to future editors to ensure that they do not omit verses, do not make errors and do not appropriate or degrade his texts, because in this case they will have opposed God.
Dapontes returned to Athos in 1765 and lived in the Xiropotamou and Koutloumousiou Monasteries up to 1778. He then came to live in the Evangelistrias Abbey on Skopelos where he stayed until 1784, before spending his last dying months in the Xiropotamou Monastery.