Euge and congratulations to our student Althea (2018, Classics and Oriental Studies), who has won the historic Gaisford Verse Prize!
Althea’s translation of an extract from Otway’s The History and Fall of Caius Marius into Greek iambic trimeters was adjudged the winning entry for this year’s competion. The Gaisford Prizes (which are awarded for verse, prose, and dissertations at the undergraduate and masters level) were founded in 1855 in memory of Dr Thomas Gaisford, the University’s Regius Professor of Greek from 1811-1855, and was first awarded in 1857.
Each year, entrants translate set passages from English into Greek and their efforts are assessed by an expert panel. The competition is open to any Oxford student who matriculated less than six year’s previously. The Verse Prize, which includes a £250 award, was last awarded to a Somervillian in 1999 when it was won by Luke Pitcher, now our Tutorial Fellow in Classics.
Althea’s success wasn’t limited to her translation nous: she also won the Faculty’s £200 Comparative Philology Prize for the best performance in the Philology and Linguistics finals papers; the Proxime Accessit award for achieving the second highest average mark in her year cohort for Classics and Classics with joint honours; and a Boden Award in recognition of her Sanskrit results and to support her further studies. Well done Althea!