I. Literature

Historically, the term ode (Gk ᾠδή/ōdḗ, “song”; cf. the derivative lit. forms of the palinode, “poetic retraction,” and parody, “mock song/poem”) was increasingly reserved for a formal song or poem of exalted emotion (carmen). Pindar (apart from four books of epinicia [victory songs], only frgms. extant) was the poetic muse of Horace (IV 2), whose four books of carmina (odae), though little read in the Latin Middle Ages, provided a …