Gaisford Prize


The Gaisford Prize is a prize awarded by the Faculty of Classics, University of Oxford for a composition in Classical Greek Verse and Prose by an undergraduate student. The prize was founded in 1855 in memory of Dr Thomas Gaisford. The prizes now also include the Gaisford Essay Prize and the Gaisford Dissertation Prize.

History

Dr Thomas Gaisford, Dean of Christ Church, [Regius Professor of Ancient Greek|Greek (Oxford)|Regius Professor of Greek] in the University of Oxford for more than forty years, died on 2 June 1855. Ten days later, at a meeting held in Christ Church on 12 June, it was resolved to establish a prize in his honour, to be called the Gaisford Prize, and to raise for that purpose £1,000 by public subscription, the interest to be applied "to reward a successful prizeman or prizemen, under such regulations as shall be approved by Convocation". The prizes were first awarded in 1857.
There have been four categories of Gaisford Prize. The two original categories were:Gaisford Prize for Greek Verse. It ceased being awarded for a period after 1975, but had been revived by 1995.Gaisford Prize for Greek Prose. By the late 1980s it was awarded based on Honour Moderations exams.
By 2003 the Schedule to the University's Statutes and Regulations provided for a different two prizes, which remained in the Schedule as of 2024:Gaisford Essay Prize for Greek Language and Literature, available to undergraduatesGaisford Dissertation Prize for Greek or Latin Language and Literature, available to graduates
The 1857–1876 winners of the Greek Prose Prize were listed alongside winners of the Newdigate Prize on the wrapper of Oscar Wilde's published Newdigate-winning poem Ravenna.

Winners of the Gaisford Prize for Greek Verse

Winners of the Gaisford Prize for Greek Prose

  • 1857: Robert Dobie Wilson for Empedocles, Dialogues Græcus.
  • 1858: George Rankine Luke for Nicias, sive De superstitione.
  • 1859: Henry Nettleship for Pygmaeorum Civitas.
  • 1860: James Bryce for The Plague of London, in the style of Herodotus or Plato.
  • 1861: Charles Bigg for Milo, sive de Gymnastica.
  • 1862: Charles John Pearson for Timæus Novus, sive De Geologia: Dialogus Platonicus.
  • 1863: Augustine Ley for Marco Polo: Narratio ad Examplar Herodoteum.
  • 1864: A Platonic Dialogue, Socrates apud inferos more suo Atheniensum principes reipublicæ interrogat.
  • 1865: William Henry Simcox for Sancti Ludovici mors, res gestæ, ingenium, after Thucydides.
  • 1866: Francis de Paravicini for Cratylus, sive de hominum sermonis origine.
  • 1867: William Wallace for The Aztecs in Herodotean style.
  • 1868: Alfred Goodwin for Ἀμαζόνες ἀντιάνειραι, a Platonic dialogue.
  • 1869: Robert Lowes Clarke for The Reign of Terror, in the style of Thucydides.
  • 1870: John Arthur Godley for Φειδίας ἢ περὶ ἀνδριαντοποιΐας: a Platonic dialogue.
  • 1871: George Edward Jeans for Iceland: in Herodotean prose
  • 1872: Alfred Joshua Butler for Ullane sint reconditioris doctrinæ vestigia apud Homerum reperienda?
  • 1873: William Wardlaw Waddell for The Siege of Londonderry, in the style of Thucydides.
  • 1874:, A Platonic dialogue, "Esse aliquid manes". De spectris et simulacris mortuorum quid revera sentiendum sit.
  • 1875: Edward Maclaine Field for The Sources of the Nile. Prose in the Style of Herodotus.
  • 1876: George Spencer Bower for a Platonic dialogue, Socrates Aristophanes Sophocles de Arte Poetarum inter se colloquuntur.
  • 1877: Arthur Elam Haigh for The Popish Plot, in the style of Thucydides.
  • 1878: Philip Edward Raynor for a Platonic dialogue, Ἀναξίμανδρος ἢ περὶ ζῴων γενέσεως.
  • 1879: David Samuel Margoliouth for Japanorum reipublicæ conversio.
  • 1880: William Yorke Fausset for a Platonic dialogue, De Œconomia quam vocant Politica.
  • 1881: Richard Edmund Mitcheson for Speeches in accusation and defence of Warren Hastings.
  • 1882: William Ross Hardie for a Platonic dialogue, Δημηγορία, Τίς ἐστιν ἡ ποιητική.
  • 1883: William Edward Long for The Wandering Jew, in the style of Herodotus.
  • 1884: Cecil Henry St Leger Russell for The Athenian state: a platonic dialogue.
  • 1885: Walter Ashburner for The Spanish Armada in the style of Thucydides.
  • 1886: Michael Henry Mansel Wood for Prometheus sive De hominum natura et origine, a Platonic dialogue.
  • 1887: Gilbert Murray for Mesolonghi Capta.
  • 1888: Frederick William Hall for Πότερον ἐὰν ἀπόληται τὸ κακὸν οὐδὲ πεινῆν ἔτι ἔστι ἢ διψῆν, ἤ τι ἄλλο τῶν τοιούτων....
  • 1889: Reginald Carter for The Battle of Inkermann, in the style of Thucydides.
  • 1890: Henry Stuart Jones for Δάμων ἢ περὶ μουσικῆς or De origine et vi artis musicæ.
  • 1891: Julian James Cotton for The Story of Husain and the Mohurram Celebration in the East.
  • 1892: Philip Herbert Hanson for Νικίας: Τῆς ἄνω ὁδοῦ ἀεὶ ἐσόμεθα.
  • 1893: Wilfred Ormrod Bailey for A supposed speech of Abraham Lincoln on the occasion of his second election to the presidency of the United States, in the style of Thucydides.
  • 1894: Herbert Sidebotham for Ἀριστοφάνης ἢ περὶ τοῦ γελοίου.
  • 1895: George Stuart Robertson for Herodotus in Britain.
  • 1896: Prose in the manner of Socrates: A Defence of Despotism.
  • 1897: Edward Launcelot Davey Cole for Wordsworth 'Of the Principles of Poetry' and the 'Lyrical Ballads'.
  • 1898: Ernest Ely Genner for On the Causes and Conditions of Naval Supremacy.
  • 1899: Frederick Herbert Williamson for The Principle of Isolation in British Foreign Policy.
  • 1900 Heathcote William Garrod for Erasmus on the Renascence of Literature.
  • 1902: James McLean Watson for Relations Between a Mother Country and her Colonies.
  • 1903: Robert William Chapman for Advantages of an Academy of Letters.
  • 1904: William Moir Calder for The Possibility of a Federal Union of the English-Speaking Peoples.
  • 1905: Thomas Williams Phillips for Imperatores Divus Iulius et Napoleon de rebus a se domi militiaeque gestis apud inferos colloquuntur.
  • 1906: Hugh McKinnon Wood for Διογένης ἢ περὶ παρρησίας.
  • 1907: John Davidson Beazley for Herodotus at the Zoo.
  • 1908: Leslie Whitaker Hunter for Warren Hastings' Defence of his Administration in India.
  • 1909: George Douglas Brooks for The Relation between Art and Morality.
  • 1911: George Leicester Marriott for A Dialogue Between Socrates, Agathon and Aristophanes, τοῦ αὐτοῦ ἀνδρὸς εἶναι κωμῳδίαν καὶ τραγῳδίαν ἐπίστασθαι ποιεῖν.
  • 1912: Cecil John Ellingham for Πορφυρίων Δίης Τύραννος.
  • 1913: Godfrey Rolles Driver for Στάσεως ἐν Βρεταννοῖς γενομένης, λέγει μὲν ὁ προστάτης τοῦ δήμου, ἀντιλέγει δὲ ὁ στρατηγός...
  • 1914: Harry Samuels for Crates, sive De vita simplici, a dialogue.
  • 1915: Robert Walter Theodore Gordon Scott for Panama.
  • 1921: Christian James Fordyce for Herodotus in Ireland: being part of the third book of his account of Britain.
  • 1922: William Francis Ross Hardie for A Lucianic dialogue between Socrates in Hades and certain men of the present day.
  • 1923: Basil Edward Butler for Ἡράκλειτος, a translation of a passage from Prof. Eddington's Romanes lecture .
  • 1926: Ronald Syme for a section of Thomas More's Utopia into Platonic prose.
  • 1927: Colin Hardie.
  • 1930: Peter J. McGowen for a translation of Leo Tolstoy's The First Step, chapter 7.
  • 1931: John Langshaw Austin.
  • 1932: Humphry Gilbert Bohun Lynch for a translation of the Areopagitica.
  • 1933: Arthur Frederick Hall for Boswell's Life of Johnson in the style of Lucian.
  • 1934: W.H. Walsh for Envoys from Russia and Japan seek alliance with Chinese Republic.
  • 1936: John Godfrey Griffith for a translation of Tolstoy's Thou Shalt Not Kill.
  • 1937: Henry Arthur Pears Fisher for Burke's Letters on a Regicide Peace.
  • 1938: Vincent Turner for A.E. Housman's Introductory Lecture .
  • 1939: David Penistan Simpson for Characters in the Style of Theophrastus: the Snob, the Prig, and the Pedant.
  • 1948: John Francis Bligh for Thomas Erskine's Speech in Defence of Mr. John Frost, 1793.
  • 1952: Jeremy Morse
  • 1981: Armand D'Angour.
  • 1995: Deborah W. Rooke.
  • 1996: Holger Gzella.
  • 1997: Martin Revermann .
  • 1998: Sinead Willis.
  • 1999: Letizia Poli-Palladini.
  • 2000: Luke Pitcher.
  • 2002: Oliver Thomas.
  • 2009: Christopher White.
  • 2019: Lucas Jones.
  • 2020: Jason Webber.
  • 2021: Nicholas Stone.
  • 2022: Lucas Barron.
  • 2023: Althea Sovani.
  • 2024: Aron Szocs.

Winners of the Gaisford Essay Prize

  • 1996: Ben Rowland.
  • 1997: Nicholas Larkin.
  • 1998: No prize awarded.
  • 2007: Sarah Cullinan.
  • 2008: Robert Colborn.
  • 2009: Scott Liddle.
  • 2014: Supratik Baralay.

Winners of the Gaisford Dissertation Prize

  • 1987: Richard Maxwell Gaskin, Tragedy and Subjectivity in Virgil’s Aeneid.
  • 1998: No prize awarded.
  • 1999: Letizia Poli-Palladini and Tobias Reinhardt jointly.
  • 2002: Wolfgang David Cirilo de Melo, for work on the Latin verb system.
  • 2008: Oliver Thomas.
  • 2014: Thomas Nelson.
  • 2015: Ella Grunberger-Kirsh.
  • 2017: Timothy Foot and Elinor Garnett jointly.
  • 2019: Dan Byam Shaw and Sebastian Hyams.
  • 2021: Charles Baker.
  • 2023: Christopher G. Lu.
  • 2024: Alexander Christensen and Finn Jarvis.

Notable winning entries

John Davidson Beazley's winning entry for the 1907 Greek Prose prize, Herodotus at the Zoo, was reprinted by Blackwell in 1911 and later appeared in a collection of classical parodies produced in Switzerland in 1968. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography calls it "an enchanting work".
George Stuart Robertson won the prize for Greek Verse in 1894 with a translation of a hundred lines of Shakespeare into comic iambic verse, and the next year he won the prize for Greek Prose and a Blue for hammer throwing. He heard about the 1896 Summer Olympics, the first of the modern era, and later explained "Greek classics were my proper academic field, so I could hardly resist a go at the Olympics, could I?" On arrival in Athens, he found to his dismay that his discipline of hammer throwing was not to be competed in, so in the spirit of amateurism he entered the shot put, the discus and the tennis. In the discus, he recorded the Games' worst ever throw, and in the tennis doubles he lost his only match but nevertheless won a Bronze Medal. In a ceremony after the Games, Robertson recited an ode to athletic prowess which he had composed in Greek.
Between 1953 and 1956, C. G. R. Leach won all four University prizes for composition in classical languages – the Gaisford Greek Verse and Prose prizes, and the Chancellor's Prizes for Latin Verse and Prose – while his brother J. H. C. Leach won three and was runner-up for a fourth.

In fiction

In Max Beerbohm's satirical tragedy of undergraduate life at Oxford, Zuleika Dobson, the hero, called the Duke of Dorset, has won one of the Prizes: