Gaisford Prize

Dr Thomas Gaisford, Dean of Christ Church, Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford for more than forty years (1811–1855), died on 2 June 1855.

[7] John Davidson Beazley's winning entry for the 1907 Greek Prose prize, Herodotus at the Zoo, was reprinted by Blackwell in 1911 and later appeared in a collection of classical parodies produced in Switzerland in 1968.

On arrival in Athens, he found to his dismay that his discipline of hammer throwing was not to be competed in, so in the spirit of amateurism he entered the shot put, the discus and the tennis.

In the discus, he recorded the Games' worst ever throw, and in the tennis doubles he lost his only match but nevertheless won a Bronze Medal.

For, whereas the peacock is a fool even among birds, the Duke had already taken (besides a particularly brilliant First in Mods) the Stanhope, the Newdigate, the Lothian, and the Gaisford Prize for Greek Verse.