Alala (

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

: (alalá); "battle-cry" or "war-cry") was the

personification Personification is the representation of a thing or abstraction as a person, often as an embodiment or incarnation. In the arts, many things are commonly personified, including: places, especially cities, National personification, countries, an ...

of the war cry in

Greek mythology Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the Ancient Greece, ancient Greeks, and a genre of ancient Greek folklore, today absorbed alongside Roman mythology into the broader designation of classical mythology. These stories conc ...

. Her name derives from the

onomatopoeic Onomatopoeia (or rarely echoism) is a type of word, or the process of creating a word, that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Common onomatopoeias in English include animal noises such as ''oink'', '' ...

Greek word (alalḗ), hence the verb (alalázō), "to raise the war-cry". Greek soldiers attacked the enemy with this cry in order to cause panic in their lines and it was asserted that Athenians adopted it to emulate the cry of the owl, the bird of their patron goddess

Athena Athena or Athene, often given the epithet Pallas, is an ancient Greek religion, ancient Greek goddess associated with wisdom, warfare, and handicraft who was later syncretism, syncretized with the Roman goddess Minerva. Athena was regarde ...

. According to

Pindar Pindar (; ; ; ) was an Greek lyric, Ancient Greek lyric poet from Thebes, Greece, Thebes. Of the Western canon, canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, his work is the best preserved. Quintilian wrote, "Of the nine lyric poets, Pindar i ...

, Alala was the daughter of

Polemos In Greek mythology, Polemos or Polemus ( ''Pólemos''; "war") was a daemon; a divine personification or embodiment of war. No cult practices or myths are known for him, and as an abstract representation he figures mainly in allegory and philo ...

, the personification of war, and was characterised by the poet as "prelude to spears, to whom men offer a holy sacrifice of death on behalf of their city". A poetic

epithet An epithet (, ), also a byname, is a descriptive term (word or phrase) commonly accompanying or occurring in place of the name of a real or fictitious person, place, or thing. It is usually literally descriptive, as in Alfred the Great, Suleima ...

of the war god

Ares Ares (; , ''Árēs'' ) is the List of Greek deities, Greek god of war god, war and courage. He is one of the Twelve Olympians, and the son of Zeus and Hera. The Greeks were ambivalent towards him. He embodies the physical valor necessary for ...

is ''Alaláxios'' (). Alala is one of the attendants of Ares out on the

battle A battle is an occurrence of combat in warfare between opposing military units of any number or size. A war usually consists of multiple battles. In general, a battle is a military engagement that is well defined in duration, area, and force co ...

field, along with the rest of his entourage: Phobos and Deimos (his sons); Eris/ Discordia, with the

Androktasiai In Greek mythology, the Androktasiai ( ('Manslaughters', 'Manslayings', 'Slayings of Men'), from the plural of ) are collectively the personification of the slaughter of men in battle. The Androktasiai are named in line 228 of Hesiod's ''Theogony'' ...

, Makhai, Hysminai, and the Phonoi (Eris' children); the

Spartoi In Greek myth, dragon's teeth (, ''odontes (tou) drakontos'') feature prominently in the legends of the Phoenician prince Cadmus and in Jason's quest for the Golden Fleece. In each case, the dragons are present and breathe fire. Their teeth, ...

, and the Keres. In Italy the war-cry (modified as ''Eja Eja Alalà'') /e.jɑ e.jɑ ɑ.lɑ.'lɑ/ was invented by Gabriele D'Annunzio in August 1917, using the Greek cry preceded by a Sardinian shout, in place of what he considered the barbaric 'Hip! Hip! Hurrah!'. It was used by the aviation corps soon afterwards before setting out on a dangerous flight during

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

. In 1919 it was associated with the corps that captured

Fiume Rijeka (; Fiume ( �fjuːme in Italian and in Fiuman Venetian) is the principal seaport and the third-largest city in Croatia. It is located in Primorje-Gorski Kotar County on Kvarner Bay, an inlet of the Adriatic Sea and in 2021 had a po ...

and was then adopted by the

Fascist Fascism ( ) is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement. It is characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural soci ...

movement. Later a young Polish sympathiser, Artur Maria Swinarski (1900–65), used the cry as the title of a collection of his poems in 1926.Isabelle Vonlanthen, ''Dichten für das Vaterland'', Zürich, 2012
p. 229
/ref>

Notes

References

, ''Nemean Odes. Isthmian Odes. Fragments'', edited and translated by William H. Race,

Loeb Classical Library The Loeb Classical Library (LCL; named after James Loeb; , ) is a monographic series of books originally published by Heinemann and since 1934 by Harvard University Press. It has bilingual editions of ancient Greek and Latin literature, ...

No. 485, Cambridge, Massachusetts,

Harvard University Press Harvard University Press (HUP) is an academic publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University. It is a member of the Association of University Presses. Its director since 2017 is George Andreou. The pres ...

, 1997. {{ISBN, 978-0-674-99534-5
Online version at Harvard University Press
* ''

Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft The Pauly encyclopedias or the Pauly-Wissowa family of encyclopedias, are a set of related encyclopedias on Greco-Roman world, Greco-Roman classical studies, topics and scholarship. The first of these, or (1839–1852), was begun by compiler A ...

'', Band I, Halbband 1, Stuttgart, J. B. Metzler, 1893
Wikisource
War goddesses Greek goddesses Battle cries Greek war deities Personifications in Greek mythology

See also

Notes

References