> As an aside, I don't understand why people translating works of martial glory choose rap as the modern equivalent. People who actually fight in wars, from ancient times to now, tend to talk in "high" language.

This isn’t borne out by the evidence. Homeric Greek, though a slight mixture of dialects because bards would travel from community to community performing it, probably would not have been seen as a "high language" by its original audience. The Kyrgyz Manas (the epic which can be readily compared to rap in both themes and, with many reciters, in the delivery) also isn’t appreciably “higher” than ordinary spoken Kyrgyz.