Myth & LegendGreek → English
Arcadia
/ɑːˈkeɪdɪə/noun
An idealised rural world of shepherds and simple contentment, from the mountainous inland region of the Peloponnese.
The Greek roots
Ἀρκαδία
Arkadía
Arcadia, region of the Peloponnese
Literally: “land of the Arcadians”
Follow a root:Ἀρκαδία1 word
The story of the word
The real Arcadia is poor upland country whose people were mocked by other Greeks as acorn-eaters. Virgil moved his shepherds there in the Eclogues and invented the pastoral fantasy wholesale, which Sannazaro revived in 1504 and Sidney brought into English. The tag Et in Arcadia ego, painted by Poussin, is the fantasy's own correction: death is here too. The region's name may be connected to ἄρκτος, bear, though that is contested.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
Same family
Arcadianarctic
In a sentence
The brochure sells the valley as an Arcadia with broadband.
Every generation rebuilds Arcadia somewhere it has never had to farm.