March forth

Happy Exelaune/o/ei Day!  I’ve never taken a Greek class, but I have taken Medical Terminology (with Vickie?) in Austin.  Dr. Nethercut reminded me of the most excitable Santa Claus, and he adored words.  I know without a doubt the class would’ve been ten times more dull if not for his contagious spirit.  Well, apparently this idiosyncratic holiday became a tradition over fifty years ago at Roxbury Latin as a pun on the Greek verb exelauno, meaning “to march forth”.  On that day, Latin and Greek students were excused from homework, and students declaimed passages in Latin and in Greek. Since 1957, the competition has been an annual schoolwide celebration.  Another website says that the name alludes to Xenophon’s Anabasis, a military narrative traditionally read by students learning Ancient Greek. The Anabasis is easy to read because of its fairly montonous style, in which every paragraph begins, Enteuthen exelaunei stathmous X, where X is a number: “From there, he marches forth X days’ journey…”  I don’t know, but I am a sucker for puns :)