School portraits / Exelauno Day, March 2023
Two Roxbury Latin Seniors Performed Homer Together. Duos Aren't Allowed.
Every March, Roxbury Latin boys recite Greek and Latin from memory in a competition that has run for more than 130 years. In 2023 one recitation got company.
Exelauno Day at the Roxbury Latin School, in Boston, is a 130-year-old pun. A Classics master, Clarence Willard Gleason, chose March 4 because "exelauno," in Xenophon's Anabasis, means "to march forth." The original prize was a day off from Greek homework, and the school notes, with evident satisfaction, that Greek and Latin students still get it.
On the day, boys from Classes VI through I, the youngest through the seniors, compete in the David Taggart Clark Competition in Greek and Latin Declamation, reciting from memory in front of the whole school. According to the school's traditions page, a boy might question the motives of Agamemnon, prosecute Verres, slay Turnus, compete in the discus, "or try to woo a young lady," all in the original language "and without the benefit of props."
The school's report on the 2023 Hall links to a highlight reel of two teachers "being used as props by the morning's participants."
Without the benefit of props, says the policy. Two teachers as props, says the video. Every school has a written tradition and an actual one, and the good schools post both.
That year, the declamations culminated in what the school calls "a surprise duo performance." A senior was reciting a scene from the Iliad in which Thersites, the loudmouth of the Greek camp, questions the motives of Agamemnon. Another senior rose from the audience, in reaction to the words, and joined him onstage as Odysseus, who in the poem intervenes to deal with Thersites.
The students gave them a standing ovation. The Classics Department Chair, emceeing, gave them a good-natured disqualification. "Duo performances are not allowed as part of the competition."
A standing ovation and a disqualification, for the same performance, in the same room. That is the most Classical outcome possible. The Greeks would have written a play about it, and then disqualified the play.
The prizes that year went to three other boys, in Lower School Latin, Upper School Latin and Greek. The duo got something better: a permanent place in the school's write-up as "unsanctioned."
I tried to recite the only Latin I know, at dinner, from a sundial: tempus fugit. The middle one stood up and said "carpe diem" and took the last roll. I disqualified him. He received a standing ovation from the youngest, who does not know Latin but knows a winner.
Sources
The public records, school pages and published accounts this story draws on. Where the story imagines a scene or a line of dialogue, that is the column’s telling, not a quotation.
- Roxbury Latin: A Rousing and Memorable Exelauno Day roxburylatin.org
- Roxbury Latin: Exelauno Day, a distinctly RL celebration of the classics roxburylatin.org
- Roxbury Latin: Traditions roxburylatin.org
- Roxbury Latin public parent and student reviews niche.com