Which are the Best Books for Learning Latin?

Which are the best books for learn­ing Latin? Which text­book or dic­tio­nary should I use? Are there any oth­er books to con­sid­er? These are ques­tions stu­dents ask me every year, so here are my rec­om­men­da­tions for any­one learn­ing Latin.

There are count­less books out there, some pop­u­lar, some unknown, or for­got­ten, and how do you know if any of them are any good? I’ve tried vir­tu­al­ly all of them with stu­dents and for learn­ing myself and found the best ones—with some room for bias—and I thought I’d share them with you. Note that there are numer­ous oth­er great books to choose from; these are the ones I pre­fer, use, and recommend. 

I’ve divid­ed this guide into four parts: 

• Latin text­books
• Latin read­ers
• Latin dic­tio­nar­ies
• Latin prose com­po­si­tions books

Let’s begin!

Best Textbooks For Learning Latin

These are the best text­books on the mar­ket to start learn­ing and mas­ter­ing Latin. I rec­om­mend you get sev­er­al books and work through them to build a large vocabulary.

Familia Romana (Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata I)

Hans Ørberg

Famil­ia Romana is by far the best book to get a strong foun­da­tion in Latin. I used it myself to learn Latin. I also use it in teach­ing and it’s the book I always rec­om­mend first when asked. 

Famil­ia Romana is entire­ly writ­ten in Latin and takes you from sen­tences like “Roma in Italia est” to longer inter­me­di­ate texts. Mar­gin­al notes and images help explain new words with­out trans­lat­ing. The book cen­ters around a Roman fam­i­ly but adds in some clas­si­cal Latin texts towards the end. This is where to start. 

Sug­gest­ed read­ing: First day of learn­ing Latin: what to do

Who should read Famil­ia Romana?

Every­one who is learn­ing Latin should read Famil­ia Romana.

Exercitia Latina I: Exercises for Familia Romana, (Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata I)

Hans Ørberg

Exerci­tia Lati­na I is the exer­cise book cre­at­ed for Famil­ia Romana. It is not tech­ni­cal­ly a text­book, but it is a great com­pli­ment to Famil­ia Romana. And, while Famil­ia Romana by itself is a fan­tas­tic book, the exer­cise book pro­vides you with count­less oppor­tu­ni­ties to drill the text­book’s mor­phol­o­gy, syn­tax, and vocab­u­lary. When I learned Latin many years ago, I went through the exer­cis­es in this book many times, both in writ­ing and orally. 

Colloquia Personarum, (Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata I)

Hans Ørberg

Col­lo­quia Per­son­arum is a book of dia­logues writ­ten so that each dia­logue cor­re­sponds to the sto­ry and dif­fi­cul­ty to a par­tic­u­lar chap­ter in Famil­ia Romana. It does­n’t stand on its own as a text­book, as it is writ­ten as a com­ple­ment to Famil­ia Romana. How­ev­er, if you study this book in com­bi­na­tion with Famil­ia Romana and the Exerci­tia Lati­na I dili­gent­ly, you will devel­op a per­fect foun­da­tion, so that you will nev­er have to think about end­ings and basic gram­mar again—you will know it instinc­tive­ly. The three in com­bi­na­tion make for the best text­book trio there is. 

Assimil Le Latin Sans Peine

Clé­ment Desessard

Assim­il, Le Latin sans peine is a fun and great book, con­struct­ed with a very dif­fer­ent phi­los­o­phy than Famil­ia Romana. It con­sists of 101 dia­logues in Latin with a par­al­lel trans­la­tion in French (it is also avail­able in Ital­ian as Assim­il Il Lati­no sen­za sfor­zo, and Ger­man as Latein ohne Mühe). Some of the dia­logues are sil­ly con­ver­sa­tions in every­day sit­u­a­tions, while oth­ers are pas­sages tak­en from Latin lit­er­a­ture, from Plau­tus to an ear­ly mod­ern apothe­cary oath. Each dia­logue also comes with notes on gram­mar and vocabulary.

The pur­pose of this book here is to have some fun while learn­ing. The bite-sized for­mat of each les­son makes it per­fect for short­er study sessions.

To get the most out of Assim­il, you need to lis­ten to the record­ings of all the dia­logues repeat­ed­ly to start devel­op­ing an intu­itive under­stand­ing of Latin.

Assim­il Le Latin Sans Peine is best used in con­junc­tion with a com­plete foun­da­tion­al course in Latin like Famil­ia Romana. This way, you get a strong foun­da­tion from FR while at the same time dis­cov­er inter­est­ing pas­sages from two mil­len­nia of Latin literature. 

Note: There is anoth­er Latin text­book from Assim­il by Isabelle Ducos-Fil­ip­pi. I do not rec­om­mend this one; get the one by Clé­ment Desessard.

Who should read Assim­il Le Latin Sans Peine?

If you are not com­fort­able with a book entire­ly writ­ten in Latin and wish to have a trans­la­tion, then Assim­il is the book for you.

Although the trans­la­tions and com­ments are in French, you could still get a lot out of the book by read­ing and lis­ten­ing to the dia­logues. With­out the French notes and trans­la­tions, you should per­haps wait until you have a foun­da­tion in Latin. 

It is also the book for you if you have already used the Assim­il series when learn­ing anoth­er lan­guage and found it worked for you. How­ev­er, I strong­ly rec­om­mend you use Assim­il Le Latin sans peine in con­junc­tion with Famil­ia Romana to get the most out of both of them. 

Best Latin Readers

What is a Latin reader?

Latin read­ers is a genre of usu­al­ly short­er books pop­u­lar in the 19th and ear­ly 20th cen­turies. They were meant to bridge the gap between basic stud­ies and read­ing clas­si­cal lit­er­a­ture. Some con­sist of selec­tions from the clas­si­cal canon, while oth­ers con­tain orig­i­nal or adapt­ed Latin. Here we are talk­ing about the lat­ter of the two. Note that there are count­less Latin read­ers, and here we only cite a hand­ful of the best. 

Why do you need a reader? Isn’t a textbook enough? 

A good text­book, like Famil­ia Romana, will teach you a good deal of the most fre­quent aspects of Latin in terms of vocab­u­lary and gram­mar. How­ev­er, to progress, you need to read more Latin beyond the text­book. Read­ers are a great way to encounter a wider range of vocabulary—and also sub­ject matter.

Below you’ll find the best Latin read­ers, or books, for exten­sive read­ing. They dif­fer in lev­el and scope. I’ve not­ed below each book when it is suit­able, or pos­si­ble even, to read them. For the best result, you should strive to read them all, many times. 

Fabulae Syrae

Fab­u­lae Syrae con­tains myths and sto­ries from the clas­si­cal world retold in inter­me­di­ate Latin. Each sto­ry cor­re­sponds to a chap­ter in the sec­ond half of Famil­ia Romana and thus is a per­fect com­pan­ion to that book. 

It’s also a great way to learn about the myths of the clas­si­cal world that were ever-present in the minds of the Roman authors who had been steeped in them from childhood.

When can you read Fab­u­lae Syrae?

I have my stu­dents study Famil­ia Romana with a step-by-step method, and when they’ve fin­ished the first half of the book, they start read­ing Fab­u­lae Syrae as well. This is the way to go, as Fab­u­lae Syrae will rein­force the mate­r­i­al of the cor­re­spond­ing chap­ter in Famil­ia Romana while also adding new vocabulary.

Ritchie’s Fabulae Faciles

Frank Ritchie

Ritchie’s Fab­u­lae Faciles is a clas­sic Latin read­er from the 19th cen­tu­ry. It is an enter­tain­ing book to read, with sto­ries about Her­cules, Odysseus, Perseus, and Jason and the Argonauts. 

Fab­u­lae Faciles was writ­ten to pro­vide learn­ers with a step­ping stone to Cae­sar’s De Bel­lo Gal­li­co, which has tra­di­tion­al­ly been the first Roman text stu­dents read. For this rea­son, it is writ­ten in a straight­for­ward style, with fre­quent use of the most com­mon turns of phras­es from Cae­sar, e.g., his rebus con­sti­tutis (“Hav­ing decid­ed upon these things”). If you read and re-read this, you will build your vocab­u­lary and knowl­edge about the myths of the clas­si­cal world.

You can find an edi­tion which has Latin text with fac­ing vocab­u­lary and com­men­tary here. 

When can you read Ritchie’s Fab­u­lae Faciles?

If you have worked through Famil­ia Romana method­i­cal­ly and dili­gent­ly, you will be able to read Fab­u­lae Faciles com­fort­ably. The best thing to do is to read Fab­u­lae Syrae first as there will be a lot of over­lap­ping vocab­u­lary and sub­ject mat­ter. Then you con­tin­ue to Fab­u­lae Faciles; There might be some words or points of gram­mar that are dif­fi­cult in Fab­u­lae Faciles, but then you can check the glos­sary and the com­ments in this edition.

Pugio Bruti — A Crime Story in Easy Latin

Daniel Pet­ters­son, Amelie Rosen­gren

I am very biased with regards to this book, being one of its authors. It is the type of book that I wished I had myself when learn­ing Latin many years ago: an excit­ing short nov­el in a very clas­si­cal style.

Pugio Bru­ti is a crime sto­ry set in Augus­tan Rome where a young woman, Ter­en­tia, hunt’s for the truth about her father’s dag­ger. The book is writ­ten in easy but clas­si­ciz­ing Latin with a vocab­u­lary of few­er than 350 words. It comes with a full Latin-Eng­lish vocab­u­lary. To com­ple­ment the book, you can lis­ten to the audio­book ver­sion and work through the online course video course. There are also quite a few free extra resources online

When can you start read­ing Pugio Bru­ti?

I sug­gest you fin­ish at least the first half of Famil­ia Romana before you begin read­ing Pugio Bru­ti. If you feel uncer­tain of your lev­el, there is help in the form of the full Latin-Eng­lish vocab­u­lary in the book and a glos­sary (where you can find every form of the words) free online. The book also repeats words in dif­fer­ent ways so that a word you might not under­stand, to begin with, will become part of your vocab­u­lary once you’ve fin­ished the book.

Epitome Historiae Sacrae: Brevi Christi Vitae Narratione Addita

Charles Lhomond, Rober­to Carfagni

Epit­o­me His­to­ri­ae Sacrae is a 17th-cen­tu­ry Latin read­er writ­ten all in Latin with sto­ries from the Bible in an (upper) inter­me­di­ate Latin. The great vari­ety of the sto­ries will sub­stan­tial­ly enrich your vocab­u­lary while still being enjoy­able. My stu­dents enjoy this book both for the vocab­u­lary and because the famil­iar­i­ty of the sto­ries makes them much more comprehensible.

You can find an edi­tion that has mar­gin­al notes explain­ing new or dif­fi­cult words all in Latin here. This edi­tion also has var­i­ous exer­cis­es, includ­ing cross­words and matching.

When can you read Epit­o­me His­to­ri­ae Sacrae? 

Due to the large vocab­u­lary, Epit­o­me His­to­ri­ae Sacrae is more dif­fi­cult than the pre­vi­ous ones on this list. You should fin­ish (i.e., not just read­ing it once) Lin­gua Lati­na Part I: Famil­ia Romana and the exer­cise book, and you’ll be able to read Epit­o­me His­to­ri­ae Sacrae with­out too much trouble.

Ad Alpes — A Tale Of Roman Life (2017 Edition)

H. C. Nutting

Years ago, I stum­bled upon this Latin read­er, and read­ing it made me so hap­py. Ad Alpes is a unique book and, I would argue, one of the best Latin read­ers out there. It is both a nov­el with an over­ar­ch­ing nar­ra­tive and a Latin read­er with over 200-pages of sto­ries in Latin from the ancient world. Woven into the book’s nar­ra­tive, you will find count­less pas­sages from var­i­ous Latin authors, and as such, tru­ly pre­pares you for read­ing the clas­si­cal authors. 

Read­ing (or lis­ten­ing) to this book over and over again will give you a vast vocab­u­lary and a good grasp of more advanced gram­mar. It comes with a full Latin-Eng­lish vocab­u­lary and is avail­able as a paper­back, e‑book, and audio­book.

Who can read Ad Alpes? 

It is best to have a good ground­ing in Latin gram­mar and vocab­u­lary before read­ing Ad Alpes. So, read and study Fami­la Romana, Fab­u­lae Syrae, Fab­u­lae Faciles, Epit­o­me His­to­ri­ae Sacrae before you start Ad Alpes.

Roma Aeterna, (Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata II)

Hans Ørberg

Roma Aeter­na is the sec­ond vol­ume of the Lin­gua Lati­na per se illus­tra­ta series and takes the learn­er through Roman his­to­ry and myth via pas­sages from Roman his­to­ri­ans and poets such as Livy, Sal­lust, and Ovid. 

Before div­ing into Roman lit­er­a­ture, Roma Aeter­na first retells the first four books of Virgil’s Aeneid in straight-for­ward Latin prose. There­after it cov­ers cen­tral events in Roman his­to­ry through a wide vari­ety of read­ings accom­pa­nied by short expla­na­tions of gram­mar and exercises.

Who can read Roma Aeter­na?

Although Roma Aeter­na is meant to be read after Famil­ia Romana (and the ancil­lary books of the Lin­gua Lati­na Per Se Illus­tra­ta series, our stu­dents often find that there is too large a gap. 

I would there­fore sug­gest read­ing and mas­ter­ing the Latin read­ers Fab­u­lae Faciles and Epit­o­me His­to­ri­ae Sacrae before read­ing Roma Aeter­na—unless Roman his­to­ry is a pas­sion of yours. 

Fabulae Gallicae — Fairytales in Latin

Charles Per­rault (author), Lau­rent d’Aumale (trans­la­tor)

Fab­u­lae Gal­li­cae is a Latin trans­la­tion of Charles Perrault’s fairy­tales from 1697. The book con­tains eight clas­si­cal fairy­tales; Cin­derel­la, Dia­monds and Toads, Blue­beard, Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood, Lit­tle Thum­bling, Puss in Boots, Don­keyskin and Sleep­ing Beau­ty. How­ev­er, the fairy­tales are not the Dis­ney ver­sions of the sto­ries, which means that even though you know the sto­ries, plots and end­ings might come as a surprise.

Most read­ers and books writ­ten for Latin learn­ing favor sto­ries from Rome, antiq­ui­ty, myths, or the Bible. Fab­u­lae Gal­li­cae is, there­fore, a wel­come breath of fresh air, as it pro­vides some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent to read.

There are two ver­sions of the book: a paper­back and an e‑book. Both con­tain a glos­sary in three lan­guages: French, Eng­lish, and Spanish. 

Who can read Fab­u­lae Gal­li­cae? 

You need to be at a rather advanced lev­el to read Fab­u­lae Gal­li­cae eas­i­ly, as it is writ­ten in a high­ly clas­si­ciz­ing style. I read one of the sto­ries, Mag­ae–or, Dia­monds and Toads–in our Book Club if you are curi­ous about the lev­el. You can find the video here.

Best Latin Dictionaries

Hav­ing a good dic­tio­nary is cru­cial for learn­ing Latin, but it’s hard to know which ones are good. For a com­pre­hen­sive guide and com­par­i­son of Latin-Eng­lish dic­tio­nar­ies, read: What are the best Latin-Eng­lish dic­tio­nar­ies for Learn­ing Latin?

Below I’ve not­ed the ones I deem to be of most inter­est, both large schol­ar­ly ones and small­er ones for begin­ners and inter­me­di­ate students.

The Bantam New College Latin & English Dictionary

John Traup­man

The Ban­tam New Col­lege Latin & Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary is a pop­u­lar medi­um-sized 700-page dic­tio­nary with 70.000 words and phras­es. It also includes sec­tions that might be of use when you’re learn­ing Latin, such as pro­nun­ci­a­tion, gram­mar, his­to­ry, mythol­o­gy. It is not only a Latin-Eng­lish dic­tio­nary but has an Eng­lish-Latin sec­tion as well. Ban­tam stands out, con­tain­ing slang, vul­gar expres­sions, and neo-Latin vocabulary.

Who should use Ban­tam’s dic­tio­nary? 

The Ban­tam New Col­lege Latin & Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary is a great dic­tio­nary if you want a good all-in-one resource and be able to look up a word and get a gen­er­al idea of its mean­ing. But for read­ing clas­si­cal authors, I rec­om­mend a larg­er dictionary. 

Cassell’s (Standard) Latin Dictionary

D. P. Simpson

Cassell’s Latin Dic­tio­nary is very pop­u­lar and rather com­pre­hen­sive. Its 880 pages focus on Latin from 200 B.C. to 100 A.D. and con­tain both a Latin-Eng­lish and an Eng­lish-Latin sec­tion. What sets this dic­tio­nary apart from Ban­tam’s are the many exam­ples of usage tak­en from Latin lit­er­a­ture and a sec­tion with idiomat­ic expres­sions, which I high­ly appreciate. 

Who should use Cas­sel­l’s Latin Dic­tio­nary?

Cas­sel­l’s Latin Dic­tio­nary is excel­lent if you study Latin and read Clas­si­cal texts beyond a few sen­tences here and there. It gives most of what you need with­out being too overwhelming.

Lewis & Short (A Latin Dictionary, or Harpers’ Latin Dictionary)

Charl­ton Thomas Lewis, Charles Short

Lewis & Short is, with­out a doubt, the most com­mon­ly used Latin-Eng­lish dic­tio­nary by both learn­ers and schol­ars. It is also one of the most com­pre­hen­sive dic­tio­nar­ies with Latin from the 2nd cen­tu­ry B.C. to the 8th cen­tu­ry A.D. com­pris­ing 2000 pages with count­less exam­ples from lit­er­a­ture, notes on usage, and ety­mol­o­gy. It is also freely avail­able online.

It has been crit­i­cized through­out the years for slight inac­cu­ra­cies, both regard­ing def­i­n­i­tions and, more par­tic­u­lar­ly, to vow­el quan­ti­ties. It is still an excel­lent and impres­sive dictionary. 

Who should use Lewis & Short? 

Lewis & Short is main­ly a Latin dic­tio­nary for advanced stu­dents and schol­ars. It is also the stan­dard dic­tio­nary amongst schol­ars read­ing lat­er Latin. 

Oxford Latin Dictionary

P.W. Glare (edi­tor)

Oxford Latin Dic­tio­nary is an enor­mous dic­tio­nary of 2400 pages, cov­er­ing Latin up to 200 A.D., exclud­ing most Chris­tan writers. 

Like Lewis & Short, it is a Latin-Eng­lish dic­tio­nary only and pro­vides the user with exam­ples from lit­er­a­ture and notes on usage and ety­mol­o­gy. How­ev­er, it dif­fers from Lewis & Short in that it’s not based on pre­vi­ous dic­tio­nar­ies but is a com­plete­ly new work tak­ing mod­ern research into consideration. 

I find that one of Oxford Latin Dic­tio­nary’s great­est strengths lies in the clear dis­po­si­tion of its arti­cles which makes find­ing the rel­e­vant sense com­par­a­tive­ly easy for the reader.

Who should use Oxford Latin Dic­tio­nary? 

If you are an advanced learn­er and want to dive deep into the dif­fer­ent nuances and usages of words, Oxford Latin Dic­tio­nary is a great resource. I would sug­gest you use both Lewis & Short and OLD.

Best Latin Prose Composition Book

If you want to get real­ly good at Latin and mas­ter it well, one of the best things to do is fol­low a good Latin prose com­po­si­tion course­book and start prac­tic­ing your writ­ing skills. Writ­ing Latin helps you build con­fi­dence in your abil­i­ty to actu­al­ly wield the lan­guage and under­stand it deeply.

Sug­gest­ed read­ing: Latin prose com­po­si­tion: Books and Method

Bear in mind that “Latin prose com­po­si­tion” here means trans­lat­ing select sen­tences and pas­sages from Eng­lish into Latin to prac­tice a par­tic­u­lar aspect of the lan­guage. It is thus not cre­ative writing. 

I have learned an immense amount from trans­lat­ing into Latin as it helped me find out what you I did­n’t know or had­n’t noticed in reading. 

Note! Trans­la­tion exer­cis­es are use­ful, but they will be of lit­tle use with­out ample read­ing of lev­el-appro­pri­ate Latin. 

Below are my two favorite Latin prose com­po­si­tion books:

North & Hillard’s Latin Prose Composition

North & Hillard’s Latin Prose Com­po­si­tion is a clas­sic aimed at stu­dents begin­ning to write Latin. The method is focused on trans­la­tion from Eng­lish into Latin. Note, the book still requires a com­plete under­stand­ing of Latin mor­phol­o­gy, as the book focus­es on teach­ing syn­tax and vocab­u­lary. The book starts with some prepara­to­ry exer­cis­es, which are very sim­ple, but the actu­al exer­cis­es are more difficult.

The book fol­lows a sim­ple struc­ture: each chap­ter first briefly explains a point of gram­mar such as the gen­i­tive of qual­i­ty or final claus­es. Next, there are a few exam­ples of the gram­mat­i­cal point of the chap­ter with Eng­lish trans­la­tions. Final­ly, there are the exer­cis­es them­selves, which con­sist of short, dis­joint­ed sen­tences in which the gram­mar points of the chap­ter are to be used.

After a few chap­ters, there are sum­ma­ry exer­cis­es. These are coher­ent para­graphs relat­ing a short sto­ry or an episode from his­to­ry. In these sum­ma­ry exer­cis­es, the gram­mar and vocab­u­lary of the pre­vi­ous chap­ters are prac­ticed together.

North & Hillard has a full glos­sary of all the words and expres­sions you will need for doing the exercises.

I have most of my stu­dents go through this book dili­gent­ly. Although the style and con­tents of the book might seem rather arid to stu­dents, the result from using it is always the same: My stu­dents mas­ter the most impor­tant aspects of gram­mar and phrase­ol­o­gy inti­mate­ly. In addi­tion, this hyper-focus on par­tic­u­lar aspects of the lan­guage makes notic­ing the same things while read­ing much more like­ly. “Oh, this is the same struc­ture that I prac­ticed using in North & Hillard!”.

When can you use North & Hillard?

Start work­ing on North & Hillard after gain­ing a firm ground­ing in Latin, prefer­ably after Famil­ia Romana, pro­vid­ing you study it method­i­cal­ly.

Bradley’s Arnold Latin Prose Composition

Bradley’s Arnold Latin Prose com­po­si­tion is the stan­dard text­book for more advanced com­po­si­tion prac­tice. It aims at teach­ing you to write a clas­si­cal Latin fol­low­ing the exam­ple of Cae­sar and Cicero. To do this, the chap­ters are divid­ed into gram­mat­i­cal top­ics. Each chap­ter focus­es on one aspect, e.g., the accusative and infini­tive, con­di­tion­al claus­es, or indi­rect speech. 

The chap­ters first intro­duce the gram­mar point with expla­na­tions in Eng­lish with exam­ple sen­tences in Latin elu­ci­dat­ing the points. Next, fol­low iso­lat­ed sen­tences in Eng­lish to trans­late into Latin. These sen­tences are writ­ten to be trans­lat­ed using the cur­rent chap­ter’s gram­mat­i­cal top­ic while also prac­tic­ing pre­vi­ous points.

When I was learn­ing Latin, I went through Bradley’s Arnold count­less times, both in writ­ing and oral­ly. After­ward, I gained new­found con­fi­dence in my knowl­edge of Latin idiom and gram­mar. It’s a detailed course and will deep­en your knowl­edge immense­ly while also mak­ing read­ing Latin much eas­i­er and more rewarding.

How­ev­er, if your goal is to write Latin well, this course is only the begin­ning: you will have to read and write for years to devel­op your style and vocabulary.

When can you study Bradley’s Arnold?

You can start study­ing Bradley’s Arnold after you know Latin mor­phol­o­gy well and have a good-sized vocab­u­lary. First, mas­ter the con­tents of Famil­ia Romana by Hans Ørberg and sev­er­al read­ers, and then go through North & Hillard’s Latin prose com­po­si­tion, which func­tions well as an intro­duc­tion to writ­ing Latin. 

Final recommendations

Now you have an idea of which books to get and study to learn Latin well. Remem­ber that there are many oth­er books not on this list that may be equal­ly good. Nev­er­the­less, these are books that I have used suc­cess­ful­ly myself to attain flu­en­cy in speak­ing and read­ing Latin.

Do not rush through the books; learn­ing Latin can be and should be a plea­sure­ful expe­ri­ence and not the “nec­es­sary evil” you have to pass through to learn it. Keep read­ing and study­ing con­sis­tent­ly, and over time you will be able to read, and if you want to, speak Latin well. It only takes time and reading.

Good luck!

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