Arcadia

ar-ka'di-a, a district of ancient Greece. It was situated in the heart of the Peloponnesus, and entirely surrounded by mountains. Arcadia was proverbial for the contentment and simple happiness of its people. The name, Arcadia, has come to be used figuratively for any scene of rural simplicity and peace. Arcadia in modern geography is a nomarchy, or county, of Greece. Arcady is an obsolete form of Arcadia, often used in poetry.

The later Roman poets were wont to speak of Arcadia as a smiling land, where grassy vales, watered by gentle and pellucid streams, were inhabited by a race of primitive and picturesque shepherds and shepherdesses, who divided their time between tending their flocks and making love to one another in the most tender and romantic fashion. This idyllic conception of the country and the people is not to be traced in the old Hellenic poets, who were better acquainted with the actual facts of the case. The Arcadians were sufficiently primitive, but there was very little that was graceful or picturesque about their land or their lives.--C. H. Hanson, The Land of Greece.

The history of the rise in modern literature of an ideal Arcadia--the home of piping shepherds and coy shepherdesses, where rustic simplicity and plenty satisfied the ambition of untutored hearts, and where ambition and its crimes were unknown--is a very curious one.--Mahaffy.