What's so great about Latin?

I recently had a friend ask me via e-mail what I thought the benefits of Latin have been for us.

Do you feel it's been really worthwhile? What advantages do you perceive your children to have because of the instruction in Latin they've received?

Here is my answer:

The immediate benefits I've seen with Mary are increased focus when working, wider vocabulary understanding, better spelling and reading skills, an increased capacity for memorization, more interest in foreign languages overall, more interest in Ancient History, more order and a better flow to our school day, and less work on my part, since we cover all of our grammar topics via Greek and Latin and we are able to move more slowly, with more depth, and with a better understanding of grammar than I think we would have otherwise. Grammar takes a huge chunk of our day, but we hit spelling, English grammar, two other languages, and some history, science, and geography in a little more than an hour, with about 30 minutes instruction on my part and the rest independent. If we were only doing Latin, the whole thing would take somewhere about 30-45 minutes, depending on the day.

The other benefits of Latin that we haven't seen yet, since Mary is only 9, include easier study of Romance languages (Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese), inflected languages (Ancient, Biblical, and Modern Greek, German, Russian, most other Indo-European languages), the ability to read early Church and pagan documents in their original language and/or to discern the quality of a translation, more logical thought and a better understanding of formal, material, and symbolic logic, and more concise, precise writing in English. Also, since most highschool Latin work includes working with Caesar, Cicero, and Virgil, the student will automatically be introduced to ancient history, philosophy, and literature without the need for a separate course.