Monthly Archives: March 2013

From The Warriors (Paramount 1979). It’s based on Xenophon’s Anabasis—really!

Picture this. You’ve been laboring over introductory ancient Greek for a full six months, and you’re starting to empathize with those ancient rowers chained to the bottom bench of an Athenian trireme. There’s still snow on the ground and the sun is setting at  5.50 PM. Baseball opening day is almost a month away. You shuffle into your early morning class on the 4th of March, and at the start of the hour your Greek teacher yells….”HAPPY EXELAUNO DAY!”. If you’re lucky, the instructor has brought cupcakes along. Or better yet, she or he absolves the students from some usual ordeal, such as writing the principal parts of highly irregular verbs on the blackboard to general ridicule.

You see, ‘exelauno‘ is a pun. One of the meanings of the Greek verb exelaunein (that’s the infinitive form) is “to march forth”. It’s particularly common in Xenophon’s Anabasis, a masterpiece of early fourth century BC prose that’s one of the more gripping first-person military narratives that has come down to us from any age. And since “march forth” sounds just like “March 4th”…well, it’s not hard to see the point of the joke. These days, lots of classics folks at all levels of study in North America acknowledge the “holiday”, to varying degrees. But who first came up with this idiotic incredibly clever and witty addition to the classicists’ calendar? Continue reading →