EPICEDON (formed of επι, upon, and κένος, funeral), in the Greek and Latin poetry, a poem, or poetical composition, on the death of a person.—At the obsequies of any man of figure, there were three kinds of discourses usually made; that rehearsed at his
bussum or funeral pile, was called nenia; that engraved on his tomb, epitoph; and that spoken in the ceremony of his funeral, epicedon. We have two beautiful epicedons in Virgil, that of Euryalus and that of Pallas.