II.

Classical Odes

Among the ancient Greeks, odes fell into two broad categories: choral odes and those to be sung by one person. The choral ode, patterned after the movements of the chorus in Greek drama, has a three-part stanza structure: the strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode. This structure marks a turn from one intellectual position to another and then a recounting of the entire ode subject. The strophe and antistrophe have the same metrical scheme; the epode has a different structure. Pindar is considered the greatest lyric poet of Greece and the best-known writer of choral odes; extant portions of his work include 45 victory odes commemorating, among other festivals, the ancient Olympic Games. In Greece the single-voice ode was cultivated by Sappho, Alcaeus, Anacreon, and others. These poets differed from Pindar in their use of a simpler structure: a metrical scheme that is the same in each of the three stanzas. The stanzas also are ordered more regularly and have a more personal style than those in the Pindaric odes. Roman poets such as Horace and Catullus imitated the Greeks' single-voice odes, but they wrote them to be declaimed rather than sung.