Successful Personal Statement For Oxford Classics

1. Why do you want to study this course or subject? 

Listening to operas like Handel’s Acis and Galatea, or looking at paintings like Raphael’s exquisite Triumph of Galatea, I am always reminded of Ovid’s brilliant manipulation of sources in producing stories now well ingrained in our culture – in this case transplanting the terrifying Cyclops of Odyssey 9 into a comic love triangle from Theocritus. In the Iliad, by contrast, Homer tells a deeply profound story of the cost of war, in which the humanity and inhumanity of war, presented through the sympathetic voice of the poet and the scope of the action respectively, are drawn together throughout the poem, culminating in the meeting of two tragic figures, Achilles and Priam, in Book 24. For me, however, the most moving part of the Iliad is Hector’s speech to Andromache in Book 6 when he imagines her being enslaved, because it combines the shame-driven bravery of the heroic code with an acute sense of conflicting duties, alien to most of the other characters in the poem. It is this variety in Classical literature, especially in the rich traditions of epic and mythology, that most appeals to me about Classics. In reading Classics at university I am particularly looking forward to studying more Greek tragedy, since I so enjoyed reading King Lear and Endgame at English AS-Level and the Antigone at Bryanston. 

The infectious curiosity of Herodotus, the witty cynicism of Tacitus: Ancient History offers the whole range of authorial perspectives, but what struck me the most last year when I studied Ancient History for the first time was the fact that one need look no further than Plutarch’s Lives to find the whole range of personalities still found in today’s politics. 

2. How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare for this course or subject? 

An idea particularly resonant in modern politics, from Neil Kinnock to Joe Biden, is that of the ‘novus homo’, and my interest in Cicero, through studying his works at AS-Level, led me to write an article for Omnibus in which I argued that Cicero intended to publish not only the seventy-nine epistulae commendaticiae of ad Familiares 13, as suggested by Ludwig Gurlitt, but also some of the letters to Atticus. 

In my Extended Project dissertation I investigated the issues surrounding the UK’s euthanasia legislation. In researching this subject I studied the views of Immanuel Kant and Jeremy Bentham, but also the opinions of more recent philosophers such as Peter Singer. I was especially impressed by Joseph Fletcher’s essay, The Cognitive Criterion of Personhood, because his clear and logical argument for defining a ‘person’, especially the criterion of one’s sense of the future, was the foundation for my argument concerning the value and sanctity of human life. 

3. What skills and experience have you got that show you are suited to this course? 

Outside the classroom I like to be involved in a lot of music, mostly singing – in which my favourite genre is Baroque oratorio – cello, and harpsichord. I recently performed in Mendelssohn’s Octet at the Cadogan Hall, and having won first prize in London’s Spring Grove Chamber Music Festival with my string quartet we are spending the money on making a CD of some of our recent repertoire. My other pursuits include some amateur journalism and representing my school in public speaking, while at home I particularly enjoy reading the books of P. G. Wodehouse and watching the 1950s films of Federico Fellini and Ingmar Bergman.