Exelauno

In Greek, 'exelauno' means 'I march forth.' The story goes that one of the old teachers at Roxbury Latin came across a passage that used the verb over forty times, and thought it might be fun to celebrate the verb on March Fourth. Exelauno Day, he called it, and it caught on with the boys, who would put on annual declamations in Latin and Greek to celebrate it. In my day, it was a great excuse to see girls, as the Winsor Greek club would join us for the declamations, followed by lunch. One of the main reasons I took Greek, if I remember right. Single-sex education, while perhaps less distracting than the alternative in terms of classroom study, did little for my social life, and my friends & I were always cooking up schemes to rendezvous with girls from one of R.L.'s sister schools.

My senior year, I think there were six of us in Greek, and we were all required to declaim. Mine was awful - I remember it started out with "Kai 'o pemptos anyellos esalpisn, kai eidov ek tou oravvou something something something." I'm pretty sure I butchered it terribly up onstage as well - problem was that I was just memorising unfamiliar repetitive sounds, and I hadn't set much blocking for it (a chunk of the Book of Revelations), so I didn't have actions to help me remember my lines, and translating in my head was getting me nowhere. Nevertheless, I did enjoy a nice baklava afterwards. And I still think the idea of Exelauno Day is quietly hilarious.