Epode new form, at least in Latin literature, and that he was imitating the effect of the iambic distichs invented by Archilochus. Accordingly, we find the first ten of these epodes composed in alternate verses of iambic trimeter and iambic dimeter, as at, for example, "Epode" 5.1–2: In the seven remaining epodes Horace diversified the measures, while retaining the general character of the distich. This group of poems belongs mostly to the early youth of the poet, and displays a truculence and a controversial heat which are absent from his more mature writings. As he was imitating Archilochus in form, he
Carmen Priami literary historian Gian Biagio Conte, "could only be to lend substance to some intuition of primitive preliterary epic composition." The poem is among the "countertendencies" in Latin literature that reveal Roman ambivalence toward the adoption of Greek culture. Carmen Priami The Carmen Priami ("Priam's Song") is a lost Latin poem known from the quotation of a single line by Varro. The unknown poet, "a remarkable reactionary," rejects the Hellenizing trend in Latin poetry led by Ennius ("ca." 239–169 BC) and adopts a deliberately archaic style, invoking the Camenae: The invocation of the Muse is a convention of Greco-Roman poetry, and