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Prize winners at Gloucestershire Classical Reading Competition
10th August 2022

"Dido is alive and well at Cheltenham Ladies’ College." This was the comment of adjudicator Dr John Godwin, from Shrewsbury School, on hearing the entrants of the Intermediate Latin category of the Gloucestershire Classical Reading Competition 2018, hosted by the Classics Department on Tuesday 13th March. Students from CLC, Cheltenham College, St Edward’s and St Mary’s Calne recited Dido’s impassioned speech against her former lover Aeneas, taken from Book 4 of Virgil’s Aeneid. Hannah and Nicole (UC4) gained 1st and 2nd prize respectively, having combined accurate Latin and metre with emotion and dramatic flair. Meanwhile, in the Junior Latin Duologue competition, judged by Dr Claire Holleran from the University of Exeter, Sophie and Larissa (LC3) gained 3rd place out of 21 pairs, with a spirited performance from the Cambridge Latin Course. On the Greek side, CLC dominated the competition. In Junior Greek, Alexandra (LC3) came first, with Mei Mei and Bonnie (LC2) taking the 2nd and 3rd spots. Liza (UC4) gave a perfectly accurate performance of a passage from Hesiod, which won her first prize in Intermediate Greek, followed by Rosie and Alexia (UC4). Sophie (SFC2) then beat all competitors from Cheltenham College to take first place in the Senior Greek, with a fluent and accurate reading of a speech of Creon from Sophocles’ Antigone. Dr Wilkinson, Teacher of Classics