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William Swan

SCRIBO is a creative writing contest for students of Latin . Submissions are judged on adherence to theme , connection to Roman culture , originality , and choice of vocabulary , among other categories . SCRIBO entries that receive a perfect score will be published throughout the following year . Each entry features information about the author , a picture , and their awardwinning literary piece .

William Swan is a sophomore at Milton High School , currently in Latin 3 . He loves Latin for its rigorously fluid structure , and tries to take advantage of that feature while versifying . About the piece : Composed in Sapphic stanzas , my poem depicts a speaker addressing an unnamed friend . The friend has asked which monuments of antiquity the speaker considers most significant . The speaker answers , with quasi-Horatian bravado , that the great ancient buildings — the statue of Zeus at Olympia , the temple of Artemis , the Colossus ( either that of Nero of the Colossus of Rhodes ), and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon — are all variously ruined and unappealing to him , going on to claim that the true monuments of greatness left to us are “ carmina tantum ,” merely poems .

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