Question XV. What was the people's shout?

It was a huge shout — plainly [such] as [that] of which the poet [says]: “The immense clamor, rising, strikes the golden stars.” For there was a huge multitude of men; and in the Hebrew and Latin text it is described not simply as “clamor,” but now with the epithet “great”; but in the 70, ἀλαλαγμὸς μέγας καὶ ἰσχυρός [alalagmos megas kai ischyros, “a great and mighty war-cry”]. “Ἀλαλαγμὸς,” says Origen (homily 7), “signifies properly neither jubilation nor howling, but rather displays that shout by which, in time of war, an army raising a harmonious clamor is wont unanimously to exhort itself to battle.” And this alalagmus seems at first to have been a confused sound, signifying nothing at all, repeating one or another syllable rather than a word; yet afterward it was somewhere made articulate and modulated. For from alal seems to have been made ἀλαλάζειν [alalazein, “to raise the war-cry”], which in Suidas is written more thinly ἐλελεῦ, for the grander ἀλαλεῦ, when he says: οἱ προσιόντες εἰς πόλεμον τὸ ἐλελεῦ ἐφώνουν [“those going to war used to cry the ‘eleleu’”]. Those who went to war cried out that “Elelelu,” or rather “Alalau”; and it was very frequent of old at the beginnings of battles and at the first clash of the lines: among the Persians and Macedonians, on Curtius’s testimony (book 3); among the Greeks, [on] Thucydides[‘s]; among the Romans, on the testimony of Polybius (books 1 & 12), Livy (books 1 & 9), Josephus (book 3 of the War, ch. 18), Dio (book 47), Ammianus (book 31); among the Germans, whose that warlike shout was called baritus, as the same Ammianus reports (book 21, and book 16, where you will treat of them). “Eager,” he says, “to raise the baritus” — or “the greatest [shout]” — “which clamor, by the very heat of the contests, arising from a thin murmur and gradually growing, is raised up in the manner of waves dashed against rocks.” And the same baritus is called by Festus “barbaricum,” when he says: “Barbaricum is called the shout of the army, because barbarians use that kind” — as if “barbaricum,” because the Germans were wont to cry “bar bar.” Which even sometimes today they employ in fights and exhortations, just as the Irish [use] their “pharropharno.” “The Germans have,” says Tacitus (in the book on their customs [Germania]), “songs, by the recitation of which — which they call baritus — they inflame their spirits.” And that this baritus was transferred from the Germans to the Romans in his own age, Vegetius shows (book 3, ch. 18). But whence that name comes, Lipsius investigates (book 4, On the [Roman] Militia, dialogue 11). In Suidas this kind of clamor is also called λυκηθμὸς [lykēthmos], that is, “a wolf-like sound” or “howling” — which the Gauls too used, as these words of Livy (book 20 [21]) show: “The Gauls run to the bank with various howlings, and with the singing of their custom.” Among the Spaniards too there is even today sometimes a certain clamor, but articulate and meaningful, invoking God and the saints, especially St. James; but how monstrous and terrible the shoutings of the Turks are, they know and report who, last year, 1601, were present at the recovery of Alba Regalis [Székesfehérvár], and this year (alas) at its loss again. In sum: for many nations it was, and is, the custom to raise shouts before battles; and this [is] either confused or articulate, signifying something or not, of one kind or modulated, at the joining of the lines or before — as Gellius proves from Homer concerning the Trojans (book 1, ch. 11).