Both-sides-ism wins!
This orb on which we stand doesn’t stop spinning, and here whirling in before us is our twelfth competition to date! Our contests have covered all sorts hitherto – creative writing, art, music, the serious, the parodic, the scholarly, the not-so-much – and this time round we’re going to return to our roots. In our first competition we encouraged you to build on the shock discovery of a fragment of Ovid in Yorkshire, either by writing Latin elegiacs in that poet’s style, or producing an English verse rendering.
So for the new competition, your options are either Latin or English. But what to do with them? Well, as our age cedes ever more of the human experience to Artificial Intelligence, your job is to head right up to the rostra and perform what the Romans called a controversia. You have to make not one, but two cases in succession – one for, and one against, the subject. In this case, we would like you to impersonate two Romans (or, in fact, any Latin writers), and to craft as powerful an argument as you can for embracing AI everywhere in our lives (“our” meaning contemporary either to us in 2025, or to the age of the writer whose spirit you channel), and to write an argument against doing so – but rather for banishing AI for good – in the persona of the other writer.
If you’re entering the competition in Latin, your two speeches will need to emulate the style and character of the two writers – who can be Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, Early Modern, or Yet More Modern, so long as the writer has a clear and well-known body of Latin writing to their name. Imagine that the speeches are delivered, in person, before an audience of your choice. Points will be given not just for the power of your arguments and rhetoric panache, but also for the quality of stylistic imitation – and indeed the elegance of how you choose to render “artificial intelligence” in Latin! The quality of the Latin will be judged, of course, against that of the author imitated, not some Ciceronian – or Erasmian – ideal! These entries are to be written only in prose, and each of the two speeches should be between 150 and 250 words in length.
Those attempting in English must still choose two Latin writers to imitate, arguing for and against ubiquitous AI. The challenge here, however, is not just to imitate the outlook of those two Latin writers, but to imitate the translators (particular or general) of those authors into English – it is thus a double imitation of sorts! Again, imagine that the speeches are delivered, in person, before an audience of your choice. These entries can be written in prose or verse, and each of the two speeches should be between 200 and 300 words in length. There is a wealth of material available for you to start planning your thoughts, across miles of library shelves and the infinite expanse of the internet, and we do not seek to constrain you. But those who are attempting the Latin side may like to recall some of the advice given by J.A. Nairn in Chapter III of his excellent Latin Prose Composition (Cambridge UP, 1925):
If you wish to read further on the topic, there are plenty other options. Most of the manuals about Latin prose composition can be found via the Internet Archive or (if pre-1900) Google Books. If you can pick out any titles in this image, 9 out of 10 of these books are available freely online:
As to prizes, we propose the following:
Latin: First prize ÂŁ300; Second Prize ÂŁ150; Third Prize ÂŁ75
English: First prize ÂŁ200; Second Prize ÂŁ100; Third Prize ÂŁ50
And yes, to all runners up whose entries we will be delighted to post, there will of course come wave after wave of κλέος ἄφθιτον!
This is not something to be dashed off on a Tuesday evening, we know full well, so you have time to work on it. The deadline will fall later in the summer, on Sunday 20 July. Please email your entries (as a Word document or PDF) to competition@antigonejournal.com, clarifying which figures your speeches seek to imitate, and giving your name and country of residence The competition is open to absolutely everyone, so good luck to all!
