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

personification Personification occurs when a thing or abstraction is represented as a person, in literature or art, as a type of anthropomorphic metaphor. The type of personification discussed here excludes passing literary effects such as "Shadows hold their b ...

of the war cry in Greek mythology. Her name derives from the

onomatopoeic Onomatopoeia is the process of creating a word that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Such a word itself is also called an onomatopoeia. Common onomatopoeias include animal noises such as ''oink'', ''m ...

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. Eja! Eja! Alala!

According to Pindar, Alala was the daughter of Polemos, the personification of war, and was characterised by the poet as "Prelude of spears, to whom soldiers are sacrificed for their city’s sake in the holy sacrifice of death". Her aunt was the war goddess Enyo and her uncle was the war god

Ares Ares (; grc, Ἄρης, ''Árēs'' ) is the Greek god of 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 success in war b ...

, whose poetic

epithet An epithet (, ), also byname, is a descriptive term (word or phrase) known for accompanying or occurring in place of a name and having entered common usage. It has various shades of meaning when applied to seemingly real or fictitious people, di ...

is ''Alaláxios'' (). As such she is one of the attendants of Ares out on the battlefield, along with the rest of his entourage: Phobos and

Deimos Deimos, a Greek word for ''dread'', may refer to: * Deimos (deity), one of the sons of Ares and Aphrodite in Greek mythology * Deimos (moon), the smaller and outermost of Mars' two natural satellites * Elecnor Deimos, a Spanish aerospace company * ...

(his sons); Eris/ Discordia, with the Androktasiai, Makhai, Hysminai, and the Phonoi (Eris' children); the Spartoi, 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. In 1919 it was associated with the corps that captured Fiume and was then adopted by the

Fascist Fascism is a far-right, Authoritarianism, authoritarian, ultranationalism, ultra-nationalist political Political ideology, ideology and Political movement, movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and pol ...

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
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References

{{reflist War goddesses Greek goddesses Battle cries Greek war deities Personifications in Greek mythology

See also

References