As someone who has been forced to use the Ecce Romani series for a period of time now to teach middle school, let me say that the books, as a whole, are a joke. If a student wants to take Latin for two years and drop it, then maybe it makes things a little more fun, I'll admit, but the Ecce series provides little to no "preparation" for students intent on taking the language throughout high school. It throws grammatical ideas into its readings chapters ahead of their formal presentation, which only serves to confuse the kids and make my job harder (for instance, the kids see personal pronouns in something like chapter 4 or 5, but they don't formally learn them until chapter 27!). The vocabulary it presents is just about useless for translation of actual Latin, as the kids know about six different words for "carriage" but have no idea what "dico" means by the end of Ecce 1, and how Ecce presents about 30 words in each tiny chapter makes it literally impossible to make the students learn all of it. When I first saw Ecce 1, I can safely say I had never seen half the words employed in the book once before, and at the time I had just graduated college magna cum laude in Classics. That is unacceptable. As a preparatory book for students to read real Latin, take AP Vergil, etc., I have never seen anything worse than Ecce 1. It treats Latin as if it were Spanish, when it should be taught in an entirely different manner due to the fact that it's a dead language, and for dead languages grammar is king, not vocabulary or "immersion." To prepare students for later levels of Latin, the best, clearest, most concise, and most understandable text is Wheelock's Latin. Ecce is a farce.

I am a current student of the Ecce series. Student comes from the Latin verb STUDEO which means not to merely to study but to be eager. This series is the best textbook I have used in my entire schooling career in any language (I've tried three of them). For middleschool (6-8 grade), freshman (9), or sophomore (10) level pupils (from pupae meaning dolls) the story is engaging and follows children who are more our age. I have developed a great ability of reading comprehension due to this series. In fact, my magistra (teacher) chose to use this series at her own expense over the district sanctioned Latin for Americans series for the very reason of comprehension passages instead of just boring sentences. From the first day you are reading complex sentences, bu they are presented in simple enough vocabulary and in English syntax so you can understand them. Anyone who has taken a textbook based language course can remember phrases like: the sailor sails; the soldier marches; the swimmer swims, (these examples were taken from the form of Latin for Americans.) BUT there are no such boring single sentence, unrelated translation sections in Ecce. In the third year (junior, 11 grade) book I am currently in, the story ends and students go on to read actual letters written by Pliny and other great historical Romans. There is the requisite section on Caesar, but with careful selection of passages to include only narrations which fit with the style of Latin learned previously. The first two years give one a solid base in the language and Roman life while the third gives one the opportunity to learn Roman history by reading from the historians, statesmen, and graffiti of the time. I credit this program for making me, a very poor language student indeed (this being the third one I've tried having quit the other two out of boredom), a gold and two time silver medalist on the National Latin Exam, which is now administered worldwide, www.nle.org.

This is the first text book I used when I learned latin back in fifth grade (many a year ago!), and I still value the approach it took in awakening my interest and understanding of not just the language, but the culture, the history, the politics, the context of the Roman people and their language. The text is filled with short 'stories' written in latin that encourage students to interact with the language in a living context, rather than treating the language as a dead, unusable language, as most latin texts do. This text engaged my imagination, fascinated me, and inspired me as an an adult to visit Italy to see the ruins, the town of Pompeii, and other sites that I first learned about through its pages. I thank this text for allowing me to translate latin I encountered in European Cathedrals I visited, as well.

There are few texts from my grammar school years that I can recall, let alone praise (hint, I'm nearing 30...), but Ecce Romani is one that still cherish for the impact it had on me as a student, and the lasting effects I've been able to trace in my life.

On a whole, the Cambridge Latin Course is a much better way to learn Latin. The four books are much better layed out and the stories are less depressing. (except when mons Vesuvius goes off!)

I have been using the book and I have a problem. My teacher wont help me and it is to hard so I am trying to find the translations in english. I need help.