The Paschal Troparion belongs to the troparion genre at its oldest and simplest, a single stanza distilling a feast, and no troparion distills more. Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life. The middle clause carries the theology. Death is not evaded or reversed from outside but trampled by means of itself, the instrument of defeat turned into the instrument of victory, a formulation the Greek fathers loved and the hymn fixed permanently in the church's mouth.
The final clause extends the victory backward, to those already in the tombs, echoing the Easter icon of the East, which does not show the empty tomb but Christ standing on the shattered gates of Hades pulling Adam and Eve from their graves. The troparion is first sung at the midnight of Pascha in deliberate drama. The procession circles the church in darkness and halts before its closed doors, the priest intones the hymn, and the doors open on a church ablaze with light, after which the troparion is repeated again and again through the paschal matins. Its age is attested by the early Byzantine chant tradition, its author unknown, and its three clauses have been called the whole creed of Easter in miniature, needing nothing added.