in lyric poetry, the third or last part of the ode, the ancient ode being divided into strophe, antistrophe, and epode. See Ode, &c.

The epode was sung by the priests, standing still before the altar, after all the turns and returns of the strophe and antistrophe, and was not confined to any precise number or kind of verses.

The epode is now a general name for all kinds of little verses that follow one or more great ones, of what kind soever they be, and in this sense a pentameter is an epode after an hexameter. And as every little verse, which, being put after another, closes the period, is called epode; hence the sixth book of Horace's odes is intitled liber epodon, "book of epodes," because the verses are all alternately long and short, and the short ones generally, though not always, close the sense of the long one.