Customer Reviews

Famous Men of Rome

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I bought this book to use for along with our homeschool history curriculum. My eight-year-old son picked up the book and disappeared into his room. He read the entire book in two days and absolutely loved it!

There are a lot of Romans in there you probably never heard of and that are not that important in history. Unless you really plan on going in depth about early, early Rome you might want to skip it and get The world of Augustus Caesar instead.
Famous men is nicely written and the stories presented are interesting, but mostly irrelevant until you get half way through the book.

I've homeschooled for eleven years, and I've used both the Famous Men of Greece and Famous Men of Rome for homeschooling two of my four girls and have been very happy with them. I wish I'd had these resources when my teenager was younger as it would help with her current high school reading of Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, and Homer, etc. I plan on using Famous Men of Greece and Famous Men of Rome with my youngest child as well.

Each chapter is an entertaining biography of a famous person from Ancient Rome who was instrumental in building western culture. The biographies are in chronological order from earliest to most recent and the whole book will bring you through the three stages of Ancient Rome: monarchy, rupublic, and empire. The author knows what kinds of events inspire and form the imagination of young children. It's been a real conversation-starter! I don't mind that women are not the "famous" individuals listed in the book because women had different roles at this time in history, and the notable women of the time are generously mentioned in the story. This gives us a chance to google them or hit the library for more information if we wish.

Ancient Men of Rome is in no way a complete study of the Ancient Roman culture, but it is a good way to get started and a great foundation for further study. I recommend the Memoria Press Student Guide to go along with Ancient Men of Rome for a more structured, classical approach to teaching this material. The student guide (there is a teachers guide as well) brings out important points in the reading and gives lists for memorization such as the seven hills of Rome, the monarchs, consuls and emperors, and the poem Horatio at the Bridge. The student guide also has maps of Ancient Italy, the ancient city of Rome, and finally the Roman Empire so the student can visualize the terrain where the action takes place...and the set up of the ancient city of Rome up to the whole Ancient Roman Empire. Finally, I really love the quotation sheets and timeline in the student guides. I've tried this and the Greenleaf edition of this text and their guide book before, and I prefer this edition and the Memoria Press student guide by far. It far surpasses the Greenleaf Guide. My only gripe about this edition of the book is the removal of the chapter on Diocletian which really makes no sense at all. Luckily, we had the Greenleaf edition as well, so we didn't have to miss it. For more in-depth study, we supplement with DK books, library books, documentaries and movies about Ancient Rome.

We are Catholic, so I'm not planning on using anything from the Ancient Men series after the Ancient Civilizations of Greece and Rome because of the typical misunderstandings of the Church's role during subsequent historical periods. I have not seen anything from Famous Men after Greece and Rome in any of the Catholic curriculum companies I've encountered in my search so far (although I have not exhausted them all by any means), so I plan to use books recommended by solid Catholic curriculum companies and supplement them with biographies of the saints, famous military leaders, scientists, and artists and library books for the rest of the story until junior high the next year when we begin the Christ the King, Lord of History by Anne Carrol.