Epode

	Email		Print
	Bookmark		Link

Epode

Epode, in verse

Poetry

Poetry is a form of literature art in which language is used for its aesthetics and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning ....
, is the third part of an ode

Ode

Ode is a form of stately and elaborate lyric poetry. A classic ode is structured in three parts: the strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode....
, which followed the strophe

Strophe

Strophe is a concept in poetry which properly means a turn, as from one Foot to another, or from one side of a chorus to the other.A strophe is also the part of the ode that the Greek chorus chants as it moves from right to left across the stage....
and the antistrophe

Antistrophe

Antistrophe is the portion of an ode sung by the chorus in its returning movement from west to east, in response to the strophe, which was sung from east to west....
, and completed the movement.

At a certain point in time the choirs, which had previously chanted to right of the altar or stage, and then to left of it, combined and sang in unison, or permitted the coryphaeus to sing for them all, while standing in the centre. With the appearance of Stesichorus

Stesichorus

Stesichorus was a Ancient Greece lyric poetry from Himera in Sicily, one of the nine lyric poets esteemed by the scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria as worthy of study....
and the evolution of choral lyric, a learned and artificial kind of poetry began to be cultivated in Greece

Greece

Discussion

Ask a question about 'Epode'

Start a new discussion about 'Epode'

Answer questions from other users

Full Discussion Forum

Encyclopedia

Epode, in verse

Poetry

Poetry is a form of literature art in which language is used for its aesthetics and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning ....
, is the third part of an ode

Ode

Ode is a form of stately and elaborate lyric poetry. A classic ode is structured in three parts: the strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode....
, which followed the strophe

Strophe

Antistrophe

Stesichorus

Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , is a country in southeastern Europe, situated on the southern end of the Balkans. It has borders with Albania, Bulgaria and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to the north, and Turkey to the east....
, and a new form, the epode-song, came into existence. It consisted of a verse of trimeter iambic, followed by a dimeter iambic, and it is reported that, although the epode was carried to its highest perfection by Stesichorus, an earlier poet, Archilochus

Archilochus

Archilochus was a Ancient Greece poet and supposed mercenary....
, was really the inventor of this form.

The epode soon took a firm place in choral poetry, which it lost when that branch of literature declined. But it extended beyond the ode, and in the early dramatists we find numerous examples of monologues and dialogues framed on the epodical system. In Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
poetry the epode was cultivated, in conscious archaism

Archaism

In language, an archaism is the use of a form of speech or writing that is no longer current. This can either be done deliberately or as part of a specific jargon or formula ....
, both as a part of the ode and as an independent branch of poetry. Of the former class, the epithalamia of Catullus

Catullus

Gaius Valerius Catullus was a Roman poet of the 1st century BC. His work remains widely studied, and continues to influence poetry and other forms of art....
, founded on an imitation of Pindar

Pindar

Pindar , was an Ancient Greek Lyric poetry poet.Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, Pindar is the one whose work is by far the best preserved, and critics in antiquity tended to regard him as the greatest....
, present us with examples of strophe, antistrophe and epode; and it has been observed that the celebrated ode of Horace

Horace

Epodes of Horace

The word is now mainly familiar from an experiment of Horace

Horace

This article is about the Roman poet Horace. For other uses, see Horace .Quintus Horatius Flaccus, , known in the English language world as Horace, was the leading Roman Empire Lyric poetry during the time of Augustus....
in the second class, for he entitled his fifth book of odes Epodon liber or the Book of Epodes. He says in the course of these poems, that in composing them he was introducing a new form, at least in Latin literature, and that he was imitating the effect of the iambic distichs invented by Archilochus. Accordingly, we find the first ten of these epodes composed in alternate verses of iambic trimeter

Iambic trimeter

Iambic trimeter is a Meter consisting of three iambic units per line.In Ancient Greek, iambic trimeter was a quantitative meter in which a line consisted of three iambic metra; and each metron consisted of two iambi....
and iambic dimeter, thus:

"At o Deorum quicquid in caelo regit Terras et humanum genus;"

In the seven remaining epodes Horace diversified the measures, while retaining the general character of the distich. This group of poems belongs mostly to the early youth of the poet, and displays a truculence and a controversial heat which are absent from his more mature writings. As he was imitating Archilochus in form, he believed himself justified, no doubt, in repeating the sarcastic violence of his fierce model. The curious thing is that these particular poems of Horace, which are really short lyrical satires, have appropriated almost exclusively the name of epodes, although they bear little enough resemblance to the epode of early Greek literature.