Eagerly awaiting results from this year’s Spivey Essay Prize

On Monday, 40 Sixth Form pupils sat the annual Spivey Essay Prize Paper. This competition is run under the aegis of the Classics Department but is open to all Sixth Form pupils. It is named in honour of Old Caterhamian, Dr Nigel Spivey, Senior Lecturer in Classics and Fellow at Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

This year, those taking part, chose to write on one of these three quotations –

• τῆς γὰρ ἀρετῆς τὰ καλὰ πράττειν μᾶλλον ἢ τὰ αἰσχρὰ μὴ πράττειν.
  Virtue is displayed more in performing noble acts than in avoiding evil ones.

                                                                                                                              Aristotle, Nic Ethics IV.1.7

• Primus in orbe deos fecit timor. 
  It was fear first created gods in the world.

                                                                                                                             Petronius, Fragment XXVII

• στάσις γὰρ ἔμφυλος πολέμου ὁμοφρονέοντος τοσούτῳ κάκιον ἐστὶ ὅσῳ πόλεμος εἰρήνης.

    For civil strife is as much worse than united war as war is worse than peace.        

                                                                                                                           Herodotus, Histories VIII.3

My thanks go to Dr Scott and Mr Owen for their help in compiling the paper.

We now await with bated breath the results…