On Monday this week Years 7 and 8 took part in the annual Lauda Sion spoken Latin competition, in which representatives from each Latin set performed a short drama from their Suburani textbooks to the whole of Years 7 and 8. The proceedings were very dramatic indeed: pupils wore bedsheet-togas, they painted on moustaches, and they collapsed to the floor or shook their props with glee. Alongside the usual Year 7 and 8 performances, Year 10 reproduced a section of their GCSE set text depicting the downfall of Messalina (the emperor Claudius’ wife), as described in Tacitus’ Annals, and Phoebe in the Lower Sixth gave an eloquent speech (in English) explaining how helpful she has found studying Latin and Classics at school. Finally, before the results of the competition were announced, Mrs Bird, Miss Forsyth and Dr Hayes took to the stage themselves to give a performance from one of the stories in the Year 9 curriculum. A fun time was certainly had by all!

But as well as being a celebration of spoken Latin, Lauda Sion is also a competition. Our guest judge this year was Miss McNamara, who will be taking over as Head of Classics in September. She was very impressed by the lively and engaging performances that she saw, and alongside the Classics team she chose the following prizewinners. The best team in Year 7 gave an excellent performance of the Lucilius story, reading their lines with great accuracy and drama. Well done to Bade, Angel and Margarita in 7W for their performance! Year 8’s winning group (Daria, Lulie, Livi and Sofia C in 8W) gave a stirring performance of the vox crudelis story, which produced an audible gasp from Miss McNamara when not one but two daggers appeared shortly before the climax of the performance. Finally, one pupil is always crowned the Lauda Sion Champion for the best individual performance of the afternoon. This year the award went to Audrey C in 8X, for her evocative depiction of Currax, an enslaved boy trying to make sense of his life in the Subura. Well done to everyone for taking part: it is hard enough performing in front of near 200 of one’s peers, let alone doing so in an ancient language (and during a heatwave).

So for another year the togas have been packed away, the face paint washed off, and the gladii returned to their scabbards. We hope that what remains is the joy of the performance and the knowledge that while Latin may be an ancient language it is very much alive at FHS.

Dr Hayes, Head of Classics