kontakion is a poetic form frequently encountered in Byzantine hymnography. It was probably based on Syriac hymnographical traditions, which were transformed and developed in Greek-speaking Byzantium. It was a homiletic genre and could be best described as a "sermon in verse accompanied by music". In character it is similar to the early Byzantine festival sermons in prose — a genre developed by Ephrem the Syrian — but meter and music have greatly heightened the drama and rhetorical beauty of the speaker's often profound and very rich meditation. Medieval manuscripts preserved about 750 kontakia since the 9th century, about two thirds had been composed since the 10th century, but they were rather liturgical compositions with about two or six oikoi, each one concluded by a refrain identical to the introduction (prooimion). Longer compositions were the Slavic Akafist which were inspired by an acrostic kontakion whose 24 stanzas started with each letter of the alphabet (Akathist). Within the cathedral rite developed a truncated which reduced the kontakion to one oikos or just to the prooimion, while the music was elaborated to a melismatic style. The classical repertoire consisted of 42 kontakia-idiomela, and 44 kontakia-prosomoia made about a limited number of model stanzas consisting of fourteen prooimia-idiomela and thirteen okoi-idiomela which could be combined independently. This classical repertoire was dominated by classical composers of the 6th and 7th centuries. Form The form generally consists of 18 to 24 metrically identical stanzas called ("houses"), preceded, in a different meter, by a short prelude, called a (cowl) or . The first letters of each of the stanzas form an acrostic, which frequently includes the name of the poet. For example, Romanos' poems often include the acrostic "Of the Humble Romanos" or "The Poem of the Humble Romanos". The last line of the prelude introduces a refrain called "", which is repeated at the end of all the stanzas. The main body of a kontakion was chanted from the ambo by a cleric (often a deacon; otherwise a reader) after the reading of the Gospel, while a choir, or even the whole congregation, joined in the refrain. The length of many kontakia — indeed, the epic character of some — suggest that the majority of the text must have been delivered in a kind of recitative, but unfortunately, the original music which accompanied the kontakia has now been lost. The liturgical place of the kontakion Within