epode

It was customary, on some occasions, to dance round the altars whilst they sang the sacred hymns, which consisted of three stanzas or parts; the first of which, called strophe, was sung in turning from east to west; the other, named antistrophe, in returning from west to east; then they stood before the altar, and sang the epode, which was the last part of the song.

And while she thus discharges a shrill peale Of flashing aires; she qualifies their zeale201 With the coole epode of a graver noat, Thus high, thus low, as if her silver throat100 Would reach the brazen voyce of War's hoarce bird; Her little soule is ravisht: and so pour'd Into loose extasies, that she is plac't Above her selfe, Musick's Enthusiast.

Epode, ep′ōd, n. a kind of lyric poem invented by Archilochus, in which a longer verse is followed by a shorter one: the last part of a lyric ode, sung after the strophe and antistrophe.—adj.

Strophe and antistrophe proceed in the same mournful iambic measure, in verses sweetly musical with curious rimes, when suddenly in the epode they break into a livelier strain, and in tripping trochaics give voice to an entirely different mood—a fiery indignation mingled with a deep sense of the grave crisis that threatens the autonomy of Heaven.

To Sicily we trace the germs of Greek comedy, and the addition of the epode to the strophe and anti-strophe.