{"id":48001,"date":"2015-06-08T20:26:35","date_gmt":"2015-06-09T01:26:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artofmanliness.com\/?p=48001"},"modified":"2024-06-11T05:58:42","modified_gmt":"2024-06-11T10:58:42","slug":"battle-cries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artofmanliness.com\/character\/knowledge-of-men\/battle-cries\/","title":{"rendered":"Sound Your Barbaric Yawp! 20 Battle Cries Through the Ages"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Battle<\/p>\n

\u201cI too am not a bit tamed\u2014I too am untranslatable;
\nI sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.\u201d –Walt Whitman<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Throughout cultures and time, shouting and yelling have typically been categorized as masculine acts. It makes sense. Yelling is inherently aggressive and often the prelude to actual physical violence.<\/p>\n

Across mammal species, males will frequently engage in posturing that includes roaring, snorting, or screeching. The aim of this pre-fight auditory showdown is actually to avoid having the conflict escalate into a physical altercation. If a male mammal can dominate his opponent into submission with just a roar, he eliminates the risk of getting killed or seriously injured and saves himself precious energy. If the roar doesn’t work to stave off the fight, well, hopefully it was fierce enough to instill some fear into one\u2019s foe, leading him to struggle less fiercely and submit sooner, rather than later.<\/p>\n

These roars aren\u2019t limited to the animal kingdom, though. In the great epic poems of cultures in both the East and the West, a manly, fierce yell was a desirable trait for a warrior to have.<\/p>\n

In The Iliad<\/a><\/em>, Homer often describes the story\u2019s heroes in terms of their ability to let out a howl that could weaken the knees of their enemies. Diomedes is called “Diomedes of the loud war cry,\u201d and both Menelaus and Odysseus are described as “utter[ing] a piercing shout.”<\/p>\n

The mighty warriors that populate the Shahnameh<\/i>, an epic Persian epic poem from the tenth century, are all described as arming themselves with a virile war cry: Koshan rumbled \u201cin a voice like a drumbeat\u201d; Rahham “roared out and began to boil like the sea\u201d; and the thick-bodied Rostam thundered \u201clike an elephant enraged.\u201d<\/p>\n

C\u00fa Chulainn, a hero from Celtic mythology, used the “hero’s scream” to scare off devils and goblins.<\/p>\n

The Georgian hero Tariel was able to drop opposing warriors using only the force of his mighty war cry.<\/p>\n

And in Welsh mythology, the hero Culhwch was said to be able to give a battle cry so loud and violent that \u201call the women in the court that [were] pregnant [would] abort\u201d and those women who were not pregnant would become sterile.<\/p>\n

Lone heroes weren’t the only ones known to give battle cries, either. Bands of warriors would often cry out in unison to frighten their enemies and fill themselves with thumos<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Even today, soldiers and fighters continue to yell and shout when engaging with the enemy. You even see battle cries on football and rugby fields.<\/p>\n

There’s something very visceral about the aggressive shout that taps into the animal within us. As historian Dean Miller notes in his book The Epic Hero<\/a><\/em>, “If the human voice\u2026carries the proof of intelligence and therefore of a living vitality specific to humanity, the warrior\u2019s shout announces a retrograde act, moving back or down into animality or even into the inanimate (a drumbeat, the sound of the sea).”<\/p>\n

Moving back into that raw barbarism via a mighty yell may be a way for us humans to tap into our animal strength. In fact, research backs this idea up: one study showed that athletes who scream when exerting themselves show an 11% increase in power output!<\/p>\n

The battle cry has truly played an integral and just plain fascinating role in the history of masculinity. So today we highlight 20 famous and not-so-famous battle cries through the ages and around the world. Maybe it\u2019ll inspire you to come up with your own manly shout.<\/p>\n

Sound your barbaric yawp!<\/p>\n

The Roman Barritus<\/h3>\n

\"Roman<\/p>\n

Unlike their Greek forebearers who drilled to music, ancient Roman soldiers typically marched in silence. But once they encountered the enemy, the soldiers would let out a unified war cry to intimidate their foes.<\/p>\n

Soldiers in the Late Roman army adopted many customs and habits of the Germanic tribes they fought, including a battle cry they called “barritus.” In his work Germania<\/a><\/em>, the historian Tacitus described this martial growl as marked by a “harsh tone and hoarse murmur.” Soldiers would “put their shields before their mouths, in order to make the voice swell fuller and deeper as it echoes back.” According to Tacitus, the goal of the barritus was to kindle courage in the Roman soldiers\u2019 hearts, while striking fear into those of their enemies.<\/p>\n

In the 1964 film The Fall of the Roman Empire<\/a><\/em>, there’s a great scene with a Roman legion bellowing an intimidating barritus:<\/p>\n