EPICEDON (formed of επι upon, and κεδον 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
epitafium or funeral pile, was called nenia; that engraven on his tomb, epitaph; and that spoken in the ceremony of his funeral, epicedon. We have two beautiful epicedons in Virgil, that of Euryalus and that of Pallas.