War in ancient times was made up of many rituals. To stoke their own valor and demoralize the enemy, the Romans, in unison, would shout their war cry, for which they used a barbarian word: barritus. This word originally referred to the trumpeting of an elephant, and the Romans’ cry was indeed more animal than human, a kind of mooing that began on a low note and gradually rose to a deafening howl. The Roman soldiers−some of whom were immigrants born in foreign lands−had learned this battle roar from none other than German tribesmen.

From Alessandro Barbero’s The Day of the Barbarians: The Battle that Led to the Fall of the Roman Empire, New York: Walker, 2007 (first published in 2005), p. 65.