SCRIBO is among the most exacting Latin writing competitions available to secondary school students. Unlike the examinations that test what a student knows about Latin — its grammar, its vocabulary, its history — SCRIBO asks students to produce something in Latin: an original poem or short story, composed with grammatical accuracy and, more demandingly, with genuine literary quality. The judges are Latin teachers and university professors with training in Latin composition, and they evaluate each piece on five criteria: grammatical and syntactical accuracy, choice of vocabulary, originality, literary quality, and connection to the given theme. Satisfying all five simultaneously, in a language that is not one’s own, is a different kind of challenge than any examination presents.
The distinction matters because it is easy to misread what a writing competition of this kind measures. A student who places well in a Latin examination has demonstrated command of the language as a reader. A student who places well in SCRIBO has demonstrated command of the language as a writer — a considerably rarer thing. To write originally in Latin, with vocabulary chosen rather than merely recognized, with sentences that carry weight and intention, is to have moved beyond the grammar and into the literature. The judges know the difference, and they are not easily persuaded.
Victoria Park and William Kim were among the winners this year in a field drawn from schools across the United States and Europe. Victoria received the highest distinction the competition awards. Their entries are reproduced below in full.
- Nox tacita regi similis sedit.
- Hac nocte mortui esse debuimus.
- Mare tranquillos fluctus fregit, caelum ex ira clamavit.
- Nautae suas vitas in magno periculo esse timuerunt.
- Per tempestatem, iter ad lucem fecimus.
- Lux, quae candide et clare luxit.
- Lux, quae per iram tempestatis luxit.
- Lux, quae multas vitas servavit.
- “Ecce!” quidam nauta inquit.
- Aedificium saxi et lapidis procul vidi,
- Aedificium, quod coronam lucis habuit.
- Hoc altum aedificium Pharus Alexandrina erat.
- Illud vidi, et egi gratias deis
- Et igni perpetuo Phari Alexandrinae.
- The night sat silently like a king.
- On this night, we ought to have been dead.
- The sea broke its tranquil waves, the sky cried out of anger.
- The sailors feared their lives to be in great danger.
- Through the storm, we made our way to the light.
- The light, which shone brightly and clearly.
- The light, which shone through the ire of the storm.
- The light, which saved many lives.
- “Look!” said one sailor.
- I saw a building of stone and of rock far off,
- A building which had a crown of light.
- This tall building was the Lighthouse of Alexandria.
- I saw it, and I gave thanks to the gods
- And to the perpetual fire of the Lighthouse of Alexandria.
Victoria wrote of sailors caught in a storm, navigating by the light of the Pharos of Alexandria — one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. The account is her own invention; the historical detail is not. She was in Year 8, her second year of Latin, when she wrote it.
- 1curre.
- 2amita mihi dixit ut ea et pater oculis sollicitis spectaverunt.
- 3quippe vera amita non erat.
- 4eius maritus patronus familae erat qui pecuniam mutuam patri dederat cum ignis nostrum domum perdiderat.
- 5primo pater mihi imperavit ut illum dominum appellarem sed postquam illum salutationi salutavi, ille semper mihi imperavit ut illum patruum et illius uxorem amitam appellarem.
- 6itaque eum patruum, patruum Marcum Antonium loquor.
- 7at prima luce amita paterque cognoverunt patruum in gravissimo periculo esse.
- 8illum adiuvandi causa me iusserunt ad Templum Vestalium Virginum ire et Vestalibus virginibus dicere Octaviam me misisse.
- 9nunc per medios homines in Foro curro et aliud memini quod mihi dixissent.
- 10Quas Pyramides Gizae appellaverunt, conlationem ingentium triangulorum et monstrum custodiae institutum sphingem.
- 11pater haec loquitur: “qualis centauri fabulae quas tibi legi dimidii humuni et dimidii equi erant, sphinx dimidii humuni et dimidii leonis est.”
- 12“Id. Sept. inveni patruum ullo modo. plenus denariorum in hoc sacco est.
- 13illi maximos tinnitus fecerunt qui curiosulos animos virorum adtraxerunt.
- 14tandem ad templum pervenio et paene virgini Vestali incurro quae continuo bracchium prehendit ad ducendum me in spatium post incendentem focum.
- 15pergamenum plicatum mihi tradit et sicut amita loquitur hoc:
- 16curre.
- 17itaque pergameno in sacco posito quam celerrime curro.
- 18ianuis templi par crurum gracilium meum cursum obstruit.
- 19sursum aspicio et vultum video quem videram in denariis similem his in meo sacco totiens quae pater dederat mihi in Foro crepundia emendi causa.
- 20Imperator Caesar pergamenum ex manu demit sed ante hoc pauca visibilia verba legere possum:
- 21Testamentum Marci Antonii.
- 1Run.
- 2My aunt said to me as she and my father looked with strained eyes.
- 3Of course, she wasn’t my actual aunt.
- 4Her husband was my family’s patron who had given a loan to my father when a fire had burnt down our house.
- 5At first, my father had ordered me to call him master, but after I greeted him for salutatio, he always ordered me to call him “uncle” and his wife, “aunt.”
- 6So I address him as “uncle,” “Uncle Mark Antony.”
- 7But, this morning, my aunt and my father learned that my uncle was in the gravest danger.
- 8For the sake of helping him, they ordered me to go to the Temple of the Vestal Virgins and tell the Vestal Virgins that Octavia had sent me.
- 9Now, I am running through the middle of the people in the Forum, and I was mindful of the other thing they had said to me.
- 10They called it the Pyramids at Giza, a collection of huge triangles and a monster having been established for protection, a sphinx.
- 11He said these things: “Just as the centaurs from the stories that I read to you were half human and half horse, the sphinx is half human and half lion.”
- 12“Find uncle there by any way on the thirteenth of September. There are plenty of denarii in this bag.
- 13Those made very loud jingles which attracted people’s curious minds.
- 14At last, I reach the temple, and almost run into a Vestal Virgin who immediately grabs my arm to lead me into a room behind the burning hearth.
- 15She hands me a parchment having been rolled up and like my aunt, says one thing:
- 16Run.
- 17And so, with the parchment having been put in my sack, I run as quickly as possible.
- 18At the gates of the temple a pair of thin legs blocks my path.
- 19I look upwards and see a face that I had seen so many times on the denarii, similar to those in my bag, which my father had given to me for the sake of buying toys in the Forum.
- 20Commander Caesar takes the parchment from my hand, but before this, I am able to read the few visible words:
- 21“The Will of Marcus Antonius.”
William set his story at the moment Octavian seized Antony’s will from the Temple of Vesta — narrated from the perspective of a child courier caught between patrons he cannot fully understand. This was his first piece of original Latin composition. He was in Grade 11.
The SCRIBO judges assess literary quality alongside grammatical accuracy — which means that correctness alone is not sufficient. A perfectly accurate piece that says nothing interesting will not place. Victoria’s poem sustains a scene and builds through repetition: the three anaphoric lines beginning Lux, quae… are a device Vergil would recognize, and the title doubles as the poem’s theme — the fire is perpetual because the lighthouse kept burning, and because the wonder of it has not gone out. She accomplished this in 81 words of Latin, in her second year of study, and received the highest distinction the competition awards.
William’s story presents its own kind of difficulty. Prose narrative in Latin requires not only grammatical command but control of mood and pace, and Run. manages both: the single repeated imperative that opens and closes the piece is a structural choice, not a simple one, and the decision to narrate through a child who understands only part of what he is carrying gives the story a dramatic irony that the judges of a composition contest will not have missed. That this was his first attempt at original Latin composition, and that it earned a Magna Cum Laude, makes the result worth recording particularly.