Picking up from where their Senior School counterparts left off a week ago – in a manner reminiscent of Octavian continuing Julius Caesar’s grand plans – this past Tuesday saw the Junior and Intermediate edition of the annual University of Otago Schools’ Classics Quiz.

Columba College fielded five teams (one at Year 7, two Year 8s and one each of Year 9 and 10) taking on the likes of Bayfield, Logan Park and Tahuna. Once again, Columba’s team names were top-tier (Centaurs of Attention, The Cow Goes μ, and Go Big or Go Home-r all warranted special mention from the MC), and though the thought of another Level 4 Lockdown hung over the contestants heads like the Sword of Damocles, there were a lot of laughs (including some students noting the uncanny resemblance between Nero, the emperor who “fiddled while Rome burned” and Mr. Hayden) alongside the curly classics questions.

By evening’s end, and after a number of lead changes across both categories, it was Columba who yet again emerged victorious – Go Big or Go Home-r (Isabella Oakley, Ruby Peden, Emily Roy and Aoife Sievwright) narrowly beating traditional rivals Tahuna in the Intermediate competition, while the Year 10 team of Clara Ballantyne, Isabella Cameron, Poppy Edmond and Tessa Smith (collectively known as Nobody) saw off the Logan Park challenge to top the Junior table.

With Columba sweeping the board across all three competitions, this marks the first time in the quiz’s storied thirty-year history that one school has held all three trophies at once – an utterly Herculean effort! 

Kudos to the budding classicists at Columba, and a hearty ‘macte et gloria’ to all participants.