Learning Latin the Ancient Way: Latin Textbooks from the Ancient World Bilingual Edition

This is a book that shows a large number of texts that were used to teach latin and greek to speak one of those languages to ancients who spoke the other natively. The texts generally have a latin column and either Dr Dickey's English translation, or in some cases just a Greek column, or all three. It is surprising how many of these school texts survived from antiquity. I find it to be an important record of life in the Roman Empire as well as a nice adjunct to my study of latin and greek, but as these texts were designed to help people who lived 2000 years ago, one should not expect them to be 100% directed toward modern students. Dr Dickey's discussion of each text is illuminating and fun to read. And although the book is a bit pricey, I feel that it is worth it, if your goal is to learn how languages were taught 2000 years ago. If you aren't sure what this is all about, you can search Eleanor Dickey on YouTube and you'll at least one talk that isn't related to this book, as well as a 1 hrs or so talk that is about the work in this book. I was sold after listening to that talk and have not been let down in any way. If you are looking for a book that will teach you latin using some of the insights from these ancient manuscripts, I would recommend that you pre-order her upcoming book that is actually going to be a latin textbook with lots of nice features, like dialogs, readings, grammar discussions, vocabularies, etc

I love the way this book is formatted. Its inclusion of Latin-English examples, as well as examples with the original Greek, make it excellent for classroom use in order to illustrate to students how the ancients would have approached language learning. Its examples include interesting cultural tidbits revealed through the texts, and the introductions to each example are clear and engaging. My students especially love the examples of an ideal student going through a typical day at a Roman school. Still, I have yet to hear one of my students come in and say "please, teacher, teach me Latin!" the way the ancient student did according to the text. :)Overall, a fun, informative, engaging book that deepens my students' understanding of language learning and ancient daily life.

I’ve found these ancient Latin lessons that were taught to school students in Rome and used by Greek speaking merchants from the Eastern part of the Empire to be very interesting and useful. It’s particularly interesting to learn about daily life and routines in Ancient Rome. The more things change, the more they remain the same seems to apply in this case.

The book's title is misleading in suggesting that it may be a book of language instruction. It is not, and has no value for that purpose. But as a study of how Latin was studied as a second language in the ancient world, the writing and scholarship are fine.

I haven't really gotten into it much yet, but it seems good. It is a lot thinner than I was expecting. its only about an inch thick....but the pages a packed with words.I will update once I actually start using it to study.

A very straightfoward book / format with Latin and English (and a section of Latin and Greek). Some good colloquial language often missing from the Classical text books.

This might be good with a serious text on Latin.

really helpful book, like the two column method