Classics Cups 2005
The Undergraduate section of the Cup drew a disappointing field over the year, but there was nothing unworthy about the Cup winner — David Butterfield (Christ’s College, Cambridge) from Round 1, with a brilliantly Ciceronian letter written by Tony Blair to Gordon Brown after the Granita dinner.
Pupils from the UK to Australia entered for the Schools’ section, the eruption of Vesuvius. Thomas Bath (Camberwell Grammar School, Victoria, Australia) wrote an imaginative letter rejecting the view that the gods had destroyed the Pompeiians because of their treatment of slaves. Despite the Round 1 heroics of Alex Smith (Loughborough Grammar School), the winner comes from the Round 3 entries — five in all submitted by Haberdashers’ Aske’s School for Girls. All were excellent: Ilana Lever’s classy pastiche of Jupiter calling a council of gods to condemn Pompeii; Lauren Bensted’s clever crowd reactions to the prophetess’s warnings of doom; Anna Kramarz’s picture of Vesuvius musing on what he is about to do; Rosie Clifford’s first-person report of a Pompeiian awaiting death; and Francesca Whitlum-Cooper’s fearful letter from Claudia in Herculaneum to her lover, the gladiator Celadus, in Pompeii — a beautiful piece of work. The Cup will go to the school, with all their names inscribed; the book-token to Francesca Whitlum-Cooper.
The Prose and Verse Open section (translating a passage from The Spectator) produced its usual brilliancies. The Round 1 prose winner, Peter Bryant from Australia (translating Mark Steyn on deciduous penises), would always be hard to beat. Stephen Kelly and Paul McKenna’s Greek proses (Steyn and a review by Sam Leith) came close, William Bourne’s and S.E. Dixon’s Latin yet closer (Steyn and a review by Sumption), but not close enough. So Peter Bryant wins the Cup, and S.E. Dixon the bottle of champagne.
Colin Leach is the winner of the Verse Cup. His brilliant Round 1 entry (Paul Johnson on free will) was matched by his Round 2 (Nelson recounting an erotic dream to Emma Hamilton, in the style of Tibullus to Delia). Julian Tunnicliffe wins the bottle of champagne, translating a Jaspistos competition entry on the trials of being short.
Peter Jones
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