Also 7 epod. [a. OF. epode ad. L. epōdos, a. Gr. έπῳδός after-song, incantation, f. έπᾴδειν, f. έπί upon, after + ᾄδειν, ἀείδειν to sing.]
1. a. A kind of lyric poem, invented by Archilochus, in which a long line is followed by a shorter one, of meters different from the elegiac; used by Horace in his 5th Book of Odes. b. An incantation. c. A poem of grave character.
1598. Florio, Epodo, a kinde of verses, hauing the first verse longer then the second.
1616. B. Jonson, Forest, x. Now my thought takes wing, And now an Epode to deep ears I sing.
1647. Crashaw, Music’s Duel, Poems, 90. She qualifies their zeal With the cool epode of a graver note.
1655–60. Stanley, Hist. Philos., 410/1. Pythagoras made use of Epodes.
1656–81. Blount, Glossogr., Epod.
1693. Dryden, Juvenal, Ded. p. xxi. (R.). Horace seems to have purg’d himself from those Splenetick Reflections in those Odes and Epodes.
1721–1800. in Bailey.
1847. in Craig. And in mod. Dicts.
2. The part of a lyric ode sung after the strophe and antistrophe.
1671. Milton, Samson, Pref. Strophe, Antistrophe, or Epode … were a kind of Stanzas framed only for the music then used with the Chorus that sung.
1847. Grote, Greece, II. xxix. (1862), III. 67. Choric compositions, containing not only a strophê and antistrophê, but also a third division or epode succeeding them.
Hence Epodic a., pertaining to, or of the nature of, an epode.
1866. Felton, Anc. & Mod. Gr., I. ix. 152. A series of iambic and epodic invectives.
