The Best of the Best
As anyone who loves Classics knows, over this past year Antigone has been running a new annual prize dedicated to Classical philology. It is both the largest competition in that venerable field, and the hardest: contestants have to show their scholarly expertise by working from the ground up; shortcuts cannot be taken; no earlier scholarship can provide a helping crutch; plagiarism is impossible; even cutting-edge artificial tools will very quickly prove themselves unfit for purpose. The competition is explicitly designed to test the hard-won skills of the philologist: linguistic precision, textual and literary criticism, historical framing, cultural nuance, exegetical clarity, research initiative, ingenious originality, and intellectual conviction.
For the first year of the competition, we set six texts composed in Victorian Oxford, three in Latin verse, and three in Greek prose. These works had not only never received any scholarly commentary at all, they had never even been translated out of these ancient languages. The challenge for contestants was to choose a text and prepare an edition of that text, with introduction (English or Latin), translation (English), and commentary (English), in the manner of professional philological publications. Although the texts are relatively short (PDFs can be fully viewed and downloaded here), they are rich and dense: one of the chief challenges of the exercise was therefore the strict word limit that we imposed of 25,000 words (excluding text, translation, bibliography and index).
Some 110 plucky folk registered for the competition by selecting a text and confirming their entry by the end of January 2026. It was then a case of leaving these contenders to see what they could manage by the deadline of 31 July. We knew that many would realise that they had bitten off more they can chew: leaving aside the sheer difficulty of the exercise, the task requires hundreds of hours of no-nonsense toil. Given the many demands of life that everyone is subject to, inside and outside the home, it proved for the majority of entrants too much of a challenge to produce a finished product by summertime.
It was a very happy outcome, however, that we received 27 complete entries, spanning all six texts relatively evenly. Over a million words thus came before our panel of judges, who were able to add further pleasure to their summer season by immersing themselves, carefully and deeply, in these remarkable documents, each of which attests not only to entrants’ philological powers but also to philology itself, i.e. the love of words, texts and literature.
Judging between these texts was no easy matter. In fact, it was desperately difficult. Almost every entry was excellent in at least one of the several categories to which we paid close attention. Many – more than a dozen – were excellent across all categories. We wish to congratulate all who submitted a complete edition, warmly and sincerely, as your labour was manifestly significant and undeniably substantive. Nor was it in vain: our hope is to publish, in the very near future, a volume gathering the six best commentaries on these texts, each of which will make proper and productive use of other entries. All good ideas should not go wasted.
A fuller report will follow from the judges shortly, but since September is very nearly eked out, and the announcement will in September be, here without further ado are the prize-winners and the near-winners. Myriad congratulations to all!
Overall Winner (Full Loeb Library + £5,000)
Shane Hawkins (on Raynor’s Anaximander, 1878), Ottawa, ON, Canada
Second Place (£2,000)
John Godwin (on Ward’s Empedocles, 1897), Shrewsbury, England
Third Place (£1,000)
S. Douglas Olson (on Bryce’s Plague of London, 1860), Twin Cities, MN, USA
Judges’ Extraordinary Prizes
Best Runner-up Commentary (£200): Benjamin Demassieux, Lille, France (on Porter’s Lucan, 1907) (prox. acc. Nicholas Swift, New York, USA, on Bryson’s Plague, 1860)
Best Overall Introduction (£200): Angus Docherty, England (on Ward’s Empedocles, 1897) (prox. acc., Chris Tudor, England, on Bryson’s Plague, 1860)
Best Latin Introduction (£200): Sarah Gianakon, London, England (on Raynor’s Anaximander, 1878) (prox. acc. Sergio Basso Cina, Italy, on Sidebotham’s Aristophanes, 1894)
Results by Text
Porter’s Lucan: Best commentary: Benjamin Demassieux, Lille, France; prox. acc. John Beeby, North Carolina, USA; Sarah Van Der Pas, Belgium; honourable mentions: Paul McKenna, Eastbourne, England; Judith Stove, Sydney, Australia.
Ward’s Empedocles: Best commentary: John Godwin, Shrewsbury, England; prox. acc. David Dunn, Oxford, England; Angus Docherty, England.
Dark’s Napoleon: Best commentary: Arturo De Faveri, Paris, France; prox. acc. Nikolaos Toumaras, Greece.
Raynor’s Anaximander: Best commentary: Shane Hawkins, Ottawa, ON, Canada; prox. acc. Federico Casella, Pavia, Italy; honourable mention: Sarah Gianakon, London.
Sidebotham’s Aristophanes: Best commentary: Mikhael Hack, ‘s-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands; prox. acc. Sergio Basso Cina, Italy; honourable mention: David Lawler, Mullion Creek, Australia.
Bryce’s Plague: Best commentary: S. Douglas Olson, Twin Cities, MN, USA; prox. acc. Nicholas Swift, New York, USA; Chris Tudor, England
Beyond these talented philologists mentioned above, we would also like to give strong commendation to the entries received from (in alphabetical order) Roy Calcutt, Elin Hildorsson, Anne Phillips, Andreas Prasinos, Mugdha Sandlikar, and Stefano Teppa. Each of these works had significant virtues and appreciable strengths in different directions.
To close, the Antigone team as a whole would like to convey our immense admiration and gratitude to all who entered this first contest, which we know was a substantial undertaking. It was designed to be a labour of love, rewarding in the very effort, and with the possibility of a prize as a bonus. That is the spirit in which we seek to approach the Classics. We would also like to reiterate our delight and disbelief that an anonymous donor, both philanthropist and philologist, has undertaken to fund this competition for the next five years. Such spectacular news!
We will show you a little of the winning entries in the next few days, but our attention now turns to preparing these formidable works of scholarship for publication, in a form that will make them accessible to all.
More soon. Until then, we encourage all Antigone readers to offer their congratulations to our inaugural winners of the Antigone Prize for Classical Philology!
