And what a wonderful Forum to learn some esoteric History, isn't it? Thank you, Xenephon.Yells, Chants, and Cheers are meant to get the campers moving and shouting. My post about bagpipes was purely in jest, of course, and I actually do like them in the right settings, (playing "Amazing Grace" at a funeral comes to mind) but to live next door to a young beginner would be sheer torture, I would think! Anyway, for what it's worth, I support the idea of warlike chants, etc, wholeheartedly. It isn't an instrument exactly native to Celtic ears, which prefered harps and fifes. The first evidence we have of the bagpipe as a musical instrument in Scotland isn't until well into the Middle Ages. Almost all of the Goidelic invasion failed, except for the massive migration to the Highlands in what is today Scotland. established settlements within post-Roman Britain. The Goidelic migration of the 5th and 6th Centuries, A.D. The modern Scots are not indigenous to Scotland, but do in fact come from Ireland ("Scottus" is the late-Latin term for an Irishman, supplanting the old "Hibernianus"). I hope you're aware that the modern day Scots are not the same as the Picts, who occupied the area that is today Scotland, and that the bagpipe, which is an invention of post-Roman Goidelic Celts in what is today Ireland, did not exist within the confines of the game time limit. Dio Chrysostom, who also flourished in the 1st century, wrote about a contemporary sovereign (possibly Nero) who could play a pipe (tibia, Roman reedpipes, similar to Greek aulos) with his mouth as well as with his "armpit". In the 2nd century AD, Suetonius described the Roman Emperor Nero as a player of the tibia utricularis. The Oxford History of Music says that a sculpture of bagpipes has been found on a Hittite slab at Eyuk in the Middle East, dated to 1000 BC. The evidence for Roman and pre-Roman era bagpipes is still uncertain but several textual and visual clues have been suggested. Didn't you ever watch Braveheart? As for the time frame, I quote Wikipedia: I think, when played right and in the correct circumstances, they can be very inspiring and likely unsettling to the enemy. If you saw a bunch of brawny Celts wearing nothing but kilts and hefting huge weapons marching towards you with the ominous sound of bag pipes, I think you would just about **** you pants. Oh, yeah, then we can all watch as the opposition falls down laughing! Bagpipes? Oh, Gawd! Caesar notes the howls of the Britons but does not mention any cries during battle, and I can't think of any other ancient source that mentions such things, but I'll definitely have to look again. But there is no evidence that troops in civilized non-mercenary Greek and Roman armies usually resorted to war chants and the like in the post-Archaic period-in fact, it is characteristic of their practices of warfare that no such actions occurred.Īs for barbarians, pretty much everything is speculation. Of course, in all armies there are exceptions as time and place admit, Cunaxa being one notable one. Like the Greeks, the Romans found that not only could orders be heard better and formations maintained through greater focus, but the silence of the army unnerved the enemy (we have several references to the fright that the silence of the Athenians caused in the Persian ranks at Marathon). The Romans, like the Greeks, abandoned the practice of making a great deal of noise early on. Certainly by Cunaxa Xenophon mentions that the Greek mercenaries gaving one great shout as they locked spears was unusual and was to frighten the inexperienced Persians. It seems likely that the Athenian army at Marathon did not clash their arms together as they lined up and did not give their warcry on the advance, no matter what wikipedia says (trust me on this, I have classes in this stuff). In Athens it was "Eleleleleleu!" but this cry dropped out of Athenian armies very early in the classical period). However, it was less common than the shouting of the city's warcry (in archaic Sparta this was "Alalalalalalalalalai!" getting faster and faster like a slow clap and culminating in a shrill shriek at the moment of impact. The singing of paeans during the advance is documented as having been extremely popular in Greek armies during the Archaic Period. Not sure where you heard this, but this is a practice by no means restricted to the Spartiate Similars. I bet the other more advanced civilizations at the time did so as well. I read that the spartan hoplites sang beautifully while marching calmly towards their foes. 2K A Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia.846 A Total War Saga: Fall of the Samurai.
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