There's a bit in Xenophon's Anabasis (1.8.18) where the armies of two contenders for the throne of the Persian Empire, Cyrus and Artaxerxes, meet in battle. Cyr

There's a bit in Xenophon's Anabasis (1.8.18) where the armies of two contenders for the throne of the Persian Empire, Cyrus and Artaxerxes, meet in battle. Cyrus's army has a contingent of Greek mercenaries, including Xenophon, who gives the Greek view of the battle in some detail. The armies draw up into lines and slowly advance towards each other, until suddenly the Greeks charge: καὶ ἅμα ἐφθέγξαντο πάντες οἷον τῷ Ἐνυαλίῳ ἐλελίζουσι and at the same time they all uttered the cry as for the Warlike One [ie Ares, god of war] καὶ πάντες δὲ ἔθεον and all flew forward λέγουσι δέ τινες ὡς καὶ ταῖς ἀσπίσι πρὸς τὰ δόρατα ἐδούπησαν they say that some loudly beat their shields with their spears φόβον ποιοῦντες τοῖς ἵπποις sowing fear among the horses (the Greek is Xenophon's [1], the English my crummy translation) So, screaming and drumming to scare the enemy and his horses! The reason i remember this bit about thirty years later is that the word for a war-cry here is "ἐλελίζουσι", "elelizousi". My teacher suggested that this was onomatopoeic, because the cry itself was "ELELELELELELE...", which would be pretty easy to make as you were running towards an enemy, and would be pretty upsetting to hear, coming from thousands of armoured Greeks. As sort of evidence for that, the same word also means "to whirl round" [2], and you can imagine that whirling an object round on a string (as with a sling) would also make the same sort of sound. Wiktionary reckons it's from some proto-Indo-European root, but what do they know, they've probably never charged anyone in their lives, the nerds. [1] https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0201%3Abook%3D1%3Achapter%3D8%3Asection%3D18 https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext... [2] https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=e%29leli%2Fzousi&la=greek&can=e%29leli%2Fzousi0&prior=*)enuali/w|&d=Perseus:text:1999.01.0201:book=1:chapter=8:section=18&i=1 https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=e%29leli%2Fzous...