Arcadia refers to a vision of pastoralism

Pastoralism

Pastoralism or pastoral farming is the branch of agriculture concerned with the raising of livestock. It is animal husbandry: the care, tending and use of animals such as camels, goats, cattle, yaks, llamas, and sheep. It may have a mobile aspect, moving the herds in search of fresh pasture and...

 and harmony with nature

Nature

Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical world, or material world. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general...

. The term is derived from the Greek province of the same name

Arcadia

Arcadia is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the administrative region of Peloponnese. It is situated in the central and eastern part of the Peloponnese peninsula. It takes its name from the mythological character Arcas. In Greek mythology, it was the home of the god Pan...

 which dates to antiquity

Classical antiquity

Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...

; the province's mountainous topography and sparse population of pastoralists later caused the word Arcadia to develop into a poetic byword for an idyllic vision of unspoiled wilderness. Arcadia is associated with bountiful natural splendor, harmony, and is often inhabited by shepherds. The concept also figures in Renaissance mythology

Mythology

The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...

. Commonly thought of as being in line with Utopia

Utopia

Utopia is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was imported from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt...

n ideals, Arcadia differs from that tradition in that it is more often specifically regarded as unattainable. Furthermore, it is seen as a lost, Eden

Garden of Eden

The Garden of Eden is in the Bible's Book of Genesis as being the place where the first man, Adam, and his wife, Eve, lived after they were created by God. Literally, the Bible speaks about a garden in Eden...

ic form of life, contrasting to the progressive nature of Utopia

Utopia

Utopia is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was imported from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt...

n desires.

The inhabitants were often regarded as having continued to live after the manner of the Golden Age

Golden Age

The term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology and legend and refers to the first in a sequence of four or five Ages of Man, in which the Golden Age is first, followed in sequence, by the Silver, Bronze, and Iron Ages, and then the present, a period of decline...

, without the pride and avarice that corrupted other regions. It is also sometimes referred to in English poetry as Arcady. The inhabitants of this region bear an obvious connection to the figure of the Noble savage

Noble savage

The term noble savage , expresses the concept an idealized indigene, outsider , and refers to the literary stock character of the same...

, both being regarded as living close to nature, uncorrupted by civilization, and virtuous.

Arcadia in antiquity

According to Greek mythology, Arcadia

Arcadia

Arcadia is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the administrative region of Peloponnese. It is situated in the central and eastern part of the Peloponnese peninsula. It takes its name from the mythological character Arcas. In Greek mythology, it was the home of the god Pan...

 of Peloponnesus was the domain of Pan

Pan (mythology)

Pan , in Greek religion and mythology, is the god of the wild, shepherds and flocks, nature, of mountain wilds, hunting and rustic music, as well as the companion of the nymphs. His name originates within the Greek language, from the word paein , meaning "to pasture." He has the hindquarters, legs,...

, the virgin wilderness home of the god of the forest and his court of dryads, nymphs and other spirits of nature. It was a version of paradise

Paradise

Paradise is a place in which existence is positive, harmonious and timeless. It is conceptually a counter-image of the miseries of human civilization, and in paradise there is only peace, prosperity, and happiness. Paradise is a place of contentment, but it is not necessarily a land of luxury and...

, though only in the sense of being the abode of supernatural entities, not an afterlife for deceased mortals.

Greek mythology inspired the Roman poet Virgil

Virgil

Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...

 to write his Eclogues, a series of poems set in Arcadia.

Arcadia in the Renaissance

Arcadia has remained a popular artistic subject since antiquity, both in visual arts and literature. Images of beautiful nymphs frolicking in lush forests have been a frequent source of inspiration for painters and sculptors. As a result of the influence of Virgil

Virgil

Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...

 in medieval European literature (see, for example, Divine Comedy), Arcadia became a symbol of pastoral

Pastoral

The adjective pastoral refers to the lifestyle of pastoralists, such as shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasturage. It also refers to a genre in literature, art or music that depicts such shepherd life in an...

 simplicity. European Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

 writers (for instance, the Spanish poet Garcilaso de la Vega

Garcilaso de la Vega

Garcilaso de la Vega was a Spanish soldier and poet. He was the most influential poet to introduce Italian Renaissance verse forms, poetic techniques and themes to Spain.-Biography:...

) often revisited the theme, and the name came to apply to any idyllic location or paradise. Unlike the word "utopia

Utopia

Utopia is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was imported from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt...

" (named for Thomas More

Thomas More

Sir Thomas More , also known by Catholics as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, social philosopher, author, statesman and noted Renaissance humanist. He was an important councillor to Henry VIII of England and, for three years toward the end of his life, Lord Chancellor...

's book, Utopia), "Arcadia" does not carry the connotation of a human civilization; Arcadia is presented as the spontaneous result of life lived naturally, uncorrupted by civilization.

Of particular note is Et in Arcadia ego

Et in Arcadia ego

"Et in Arcadia ego" is a Latin phrase that most famously appears as the title of two paintings by Nicolas Poussin . They are pastoral paintings depicting idealized shepherds from classical antiquity, clustering around an austere tomb...

by Nicholas Poussin, which has become famous both in its own right and because of its (possible) connection with the gnostic histories of the Rosicrucians. In 1502 Jacopo Sannazaro

Jacopo Sannazaro

Jacopo Sannazaro was an Italian poet, humanist and epigrammist from Naples.He wrote easily in Latin, in Italian and in Neapolitan, but is best remembered for his humanist classic Arcadia, a masterwork that illustrated the possibilities of poetical prose in Italian, and instituted the theme of...

 published his long poem Arcadia that fixed the Early Modern perception of Arcadia as a lost world of idyllic bliss, remembered in regretful dirges. In the 1590s Sir Philip Sidney

Philip Sidney

Sir Philip Sidney was an English poet, courtier and soldier, and is remembered as one of the most prominent figures of the Elizabethan Age...

 circulated copies of his influential heroic romance poem The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia

Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia

The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, also known simply as the Arcadia or the Old Arcadia, is a long prose work by Sir Philip Sidney written towards the end of the sixteenth century, and later published in several versions. It is Sidney's most ambitious literary work, by far, and as significant in...

establishing Arcadia as an icon of the Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

; although the story is plentifully supplied with shepherds and other pastoral figures, the central characters of the plot are all royalty visiting the countryside.

[...] Does not the pleasantness of this place carry in itself sufficient reward for any time lost in it, or for any such danger that might ensue? Do you not see how everything conspires together to make this place a heavenly dwelling? Do you not see the grass, how in color they excel the emeralds [...]? Do not these stately trees seem to maintain their flourishing old age, with the only happiness of their seat being clothed with a continual spring, because no beauty here should ever fade? Doth not the air breathe health which the birds (both delightful both to the ear and eye) do daily solemnize with the sweet consent of their voices? Is not every echo here a perfect music? And these fresh and delightful brooks, how slowly they slide away, as, loath to leave the company of so many things united in perfection, and with how sweet a murmur they lament their forced departure. Certainly, certainly, cousin, it must needs be, that some goddess this desert belongs unto, who is the soul of this soil, for neither is any less than a goddess worthy to be shrined in such a heap of pleasures, nor any less than a goddess could have made it so perfect a model of the heavenly dwellings. [...]

Though depicted as contemporary, this pastoral form is often connected with the Golden Age

Golden Age

The term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology and legend and refers to the first in a sequence of four or five Ages of Man, in which the Golden Age is first, followed in sequence, by the Silver, Bronze, and Iron Ages, and then the present, a period of decline...

. It may be suggested that its inhabitants have merely continued to live as people did in the Golden Age, and all other nations have less pleasant lives because they have allowed themselves to depart from the original simplicity.

Arcadia

The 16th century Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano applied the name "Arcadia" to the entire North American Atlantic coast north of Virginia

Virginia

The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...

. In time, this mutated to Acadia

Acadia

Acadia was the name given to lands in a portion of the French colonial empire of New France, in northeastern North America that included parts of eastern Quebec, the Maritime provinces, and modern-day Maine. At the end of the 16th century, France claimed territory stretching as far south as...

. The Dictionary of Canadian Biography says: "Arcadia, the name Verrazzano gave to Maryland or Virginia 'on account of the beauty of the trees', made its first cartographical appearance in the 1548 Gastaldo map and is the only name on that map to survive in Canadian usage. . . . In the 17th century Champlain fixed its present orthography, with the 'r' omitted, and Ganong

William Francis Ganong

William Francis Ganong, M.A., Ph.D., LL.D., F.R.S.C., was a Canadian botanist, historian and cartographer. His botany career was spent mainly as a professor at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts...

 has shown its gradual progress northwards, in a succession of maps, to its resting place in the Atlantic Provinces".

Modern usage

Arcadia is now the name of many cities and towns around the world.

In 1945, Evelyn Waugh

Evelyn Waugh

Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh , known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer...

 sub-titled the first part of his novel Brideshead Revisited

Brideshead Revisited

Brideshead Revisited, The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder is a novel by English writer Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1945. Waugh wrote that the novel "deals with what is theologically termed 'the operation of Grace', that is to say, the unmerited and unilateral act of love by...

"Et in Arcadia ego

Et in Arcadia ego

"Et in Arcadia ego" is a Latin phrase that most famously appears as the title of two paintings by Nicolas Poussin . They are pastoral paintings depicting idealized shepherds from classical antiquity, clustering around an austere tomb...

", referring to his protagonist's blissful and innocent interbellum years as an undergraduate student at Oxford University at the height of the British Empire and his new-found friendship with an eccentric aristocratic family.

In Gabriel García Márquez

Gabriel García Márquez

Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez is a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo throughout Latin America. He is considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in...

's novel One Hundred Years of Solitude

One Hundred Years of Solitude

One Hundred Years of Solitude , by Gabriel García Márquez, is a novel which tells the multi-generational story of the Buendía family, whose patriarch, José Arcadio Buendía, founds the town of Macondo, the metaphoric Colombia...

, the founder and patriarch of the Macondo

Macondo

For the oil spill, see: Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosionMacondo is a fictional town described in Gabriel García Márquez's novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. It is the home town of the Buendía family.-Aracataca:...

 community bears the name José Arcadio Buendía. Over the course of the novel, Arcadio becomes a multigenerational patronym that resonates with many of the other utopian tropes explored elsewhere in the text.

In the novel Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy is an American novelist and playwright. He has written ten novels, spanning the Southern Gothic, Western, and modernist genres. He received the Pulitzer Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction for The Road...

, the character of Judge Holden

Judge Holden

Judge Holden is purportedly a historical person, a murderer who partnered with John Joel Glanton as a professional scalphunter in the mid-19th century. To date, the only source for Holden's existence is Samuel Chamberlain's My Confession, an autobiographical account which has been criticized as...

 names his rifle "Et in Arcadia ego

Et in Arcadia ego

"Et in Arcadia ego" is a Latin phrase that most famously appears as the title of two paintings by Nicolas Poussin . They are pastoral paintings depicting idealized shepherds from classical antiquity, clustering around an austere tomb...

".

Arcadia

Arcadia (band)

Arcadia were the pop group formed in 1985 by Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes and Roger Taylor of Duran Duran, during a break in that band's schedule. However, Roger Taylor appeared in only a few band photographs and in none of the music videos, and stated he was only to be involved in the recording side...

 was a spin-off musical group formed in 1985 by three of the members of the band Duran Duran

Duran Duran

Duran Duran are an English band, formed in Birmingham in 1978. They were one of the most successful bands of the 1980s and a leading band in the MTV-driven "Second British Invasion" of the United States...

.

In 1993, Tom Stoppard

Tom Stoppard

Sir Tom Stoppard OM, CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, knighted in 1997. He has written prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage, finding prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and...

 wrote Arcadia

Arcadia (play)

Arcadia is a 1993 play by Tom Stoppard concerning the relationship between past and present and between order and disorder and the certainty of knowledge...

 (originally to have been titled Et in Arcadia ego

Et in Arcadia ego

"Et in Arcadia ego" is a Latin phrase that most famously appears as the title of two paintings by Nicolas Poussin . They are pastoral paintings depicting idealized shepherds from classical antiquity, clustering around an austere tomb...

), a play involving themes of classical beauty and order in nature, associated with the idea of Arcadia, in conjunction with themes of historical change and the evolution of Western

Western culture

Western culture, sometimes equated with Western civilization or European civilization, refers to cultures of European origin and is used very broadly to refer to a heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, religious beliefs, political systems, and specific artifacts and...

 understanding of nature.

In fantasy literature, Arcadia has been used as a magical realm, respective to the fictional universe

Fictional universe

A fictional universe is a self-consistent fictional setting with elements that differ from the real world. It may also be called an imagined, constructed or fictional realm ....

 in which the story occurs. A number of role-playing games have also adopted the idea, either using it as a separate realm within the multiverse (à la the Arcadia of the Dungeons & Dragons

Dungeons & Dragons

Dungeons & Dragons is a fantasy role-playing game originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, and first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. . The game has been published by Wizards of the Coast since 1997...

 universe), or even using it as the central focus of an entire game system (as in White Wolf

White Wolf, Inc.

White Wolf Publishing is an American gaming and book publisher. The company was founded in 1991 as a merger between Lion Rampant and White Wolf Magazine, and was initially led by Mark Rein·Hagen of the former and Steve and Stewart Wieck of the latter. Since White Wolf Publishing, Inc. merged with...

's Changeling: The Dreaming

Changeling: The Dreaming

Changeling: The Dreaming was part of White Wolf Game Studio's original "World of Darkness" role playing game line. Player characters are changelings, fae souls reborn into human bodies, a practice begun by the fae to protect themselves as magic vanished from the world...

 game). In Changeling: The Lost

Changeling: The Lost

Changeling: The Lost is the fifth supplementary role-playing game line published by White Wolf, Inc. It uses the Storytelling System for rules and is set in the new World of Darkness setting...

, Arcadia is presented as a hellish realm, where humans abducted by the True Fae are subject to unimaginable torment and torture, in sharp contrast to its usual utopian description.

The "mystical civilization of Arkadia" was the background to the 1980s animation Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea

Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea

Note: In some cases the names of characters, places, and things were changed for the English version. The original name appears in parentheses....

.

Dragonhaven

Dragonhaven

Dragonhaven is a fantasy novel written by Robin McKinley, published by Putnam in 2007.- Plot summary :The story is set in the Smokehill National Park, a wildlife preserve for the preservation and study of dragons. The dragons are elusive; evidence of their existence can be found everywhere, but the...

, a young adult fantasy

Fantasy

Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...

 novel by Robin McKinley

Robin McKinley

Robin McKinley is a distinguished author of fantasy and children's books who has written sixteen books to date. Her latest book Pegasus was published in 2010...

, ends with the phrase "Arcadiae vias peregrinentur," which the author has stated roughly translates to "May they walk in Arcadia".

According to the best-selling PC-game The Longest Journey

The Longest Journey

The Longest Journey is a point-and-click adventure game developed by Norwegian studio Funcom for the PC. First published by IQ Media Nordic in Norway in 1999, it was later localized for and released in France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Canada, Spain, Denmark,...

, Arcadia was divided from the primordial original world, and represents fantasy, dreams and magic, while our world, Stark, is the world of science and technology.

In the game Bioshock

Bioshock

BioShock is a first-person shooter video game developed by 2K Boston and designed by Ken Levine. It was released for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 on August 21, 2007 in North America, and three days later in Europe and Australia. It became available on Steam on August 21, 2007...

, Arcadia is a level in which the protagonist has to navigate through an artificial forest. Arcadia was created by Dr. Julie Langford. This forest provides the oxygen for the rest of the city of Rapture,and was used as a peaceful retreat for the citizens.

The name has recently been popularized by its connection to the pseudo-history of the Freemasons

Freemasonry

Freemasonry is a fraternal organisation that arose from obscure origins in the late 16th to early 17th century. Freemasonry now exists in various forms all over the world, with a membership estimated at around six million, including approximately 150,000 under the jurisdictions of the Grand Lodge...

 - in particular the Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

 motto

Motto

A motto is a phrase meant to formally summarize the general motivation or intention of a social group or organization. A motto may be in any language, but Latin is the most used. The local language is usual in the mottoes of governments...

 "Et in Arcadia ego

Et in Arcadia ego

"Et in Arcadia ego" is a Latin phrase that most famously appears as the title of two paintings by Nicolas Poussin . They are pastoral paintings depicting idealized shepherds from classical antiquity, clustering around an austere tomb...

" ("Even here, I [Death] exist.") The phrase is used frequently in conspiracy

Conspiracy theory

A conspiracy theory explains an event as being the result of an alleged plot by a covert group or organization or, more broadly, the idea that important political, social or economic events are the products of secret plots that are largely unknown to the general public.-Usage:The term "conspiracy...

 fiction and lore, such as the pseudo-historical work Holy Blood, Holy Grail and the novel The Da Vinci Code

The Da Vinci Code

The Da Vinci Code is a 2003 mystery-detective novel written by Dan Brown. It follows symbologist Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu as they investigate a murder in Paris's Louvre Museum and discover a battle between the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei over the possibility of Jesus having been married to...

, where it is interpreted as an anagram of I! Tego Arcana Dei ("Begone! I know the secrets of God").

Rock band The Libertines

The Libertines

The Libertines were an English rock band, formed in London in 1997 by frontmen Carl Barât and Pete Doherty . The band, centred on the song-writing partnership of Barat and Doherty, also included John Hassall and Gary Powell for most of its recording career...

 have referenced Arcadia as the destination their imaginary ship Albion sails towards.

In the anime

Anime

is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....

 series Captain Harlock

Captain Harlock

is a fictional character created by manga artist Leiji Matsumoto.Harlock is the archetypical romantic hero, a space pirate with an individualist philosophy of life. He is as noble as he is taciturn, rebellious, stoically fighting against totalitarian regimes, whether they be earthborn or alien...

, the ship in which he travels is known as the Arcadia. He calls it the place "to fight and live for our freedom [and dreams]".

Arcadia University

Arcadia University

Arcadia University is a private university located in Glenside, Pennsylvania, on the outskirts of Philadelphia. A master's university by Carnegie Classification, the university has a co-educational student population of more than 4,000. The university was ranked 25th in the master's universities in...

 is a college located in Glenside, Pennsylvania, USA.

Arcadia is the theme of album art for progressive rock

Progressive rock

Progressive rock is a subgenre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s as part of a "mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility." John Covach, in Contemporary Music Review, says that many thought it would not just "succeed the pop of...

 band Asia's "Alpha" and "Astra" albums. Both were painted by artist Roger Dean.

Arcadia Cinema is a multiplex cinema in Melzo, Italy (a suburb of Milano.)

The metal opera Angel of Babylon

Angel of Babylon

Angel of Babylon is the fifth full-length Avantasia album by German power metal vocalist Tobias Sammet, released on April 3, 2010 along with The Wicked Symphony...

by Tobias Sammet

Tobias Sammet

Tobias Sammet is the vocalist and primary songwriter of the German Power metal band Edguy, as well as the creator of the metal opera Avantasia and a member of the metal project Final Chapter. He also made guest appearances on the Rob Rock album Holy Hell and the metal opera Aina...

's Avantasia

Avantasia

Avantasia is a heavy metal project created by Tobias Sammet, vocalist and frontman of the band Edguy. The project's title is a portmanteau of the words "avalon" and "fantasia" and describes "a world beyond human imagination"...

 ends with "Journey to Arcadia".

In the recent movie Resident Evil: Extinction

Resident Evil: Extinction

Resident Evil: Extinction is a Canadian-British 2007 science fiction action horror film also categorized as a doomsday and zombie film, and is the third installment in the Resident Evil film series, which is based on the Capcom survival horror series Resident Evil...

, the characters seek to travel to Arcadia, Alaska, which is promised to be free of zombies. In Resident Evil: Afterlife 3D, it is revealed that Arcadia refers to the USS Arcadia, a ship that collects survivors for experimentation.

Arcadia is the name of the world in the Sega

Sega

, usually styled as SEGA, is a multinational video game software developer and an arcade software and hardware development company headquartered in Ōta, Tokyo, Japan, with various offices around the world...

 Dreamcast game Skies of Arcadia

Skies of Arcadia

Skies of Arcadia, released in Japan as , is a console role-playing game developed by Overworks for the Dreamcast and published by Sega in 2000. Skies of Arcadia Legends, a port, was released for the GameCube in 2002. Legends was also in development for the PlayStation 2; however, the PS2 version...

in which the inhabitants live on floating islands and continents, and fly through the skies in airships.

See also

• Arcadia
  Arcadia
  Arcadia is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the administrative region of Peloponnese. It is situated in the central and eastern part of the Peloponnese peninsula. It takes its name from the mythological character Arcas. In Greek mythology, it was the home of the god Pan...
  
  
• Acadia
  Acadia
  Acadia was the name given to lands in a portion of the French colonial empire of New France, in northeastern North America that included parts of eastern Quebec, the Maritime provinces, and modern-day Maine. At the end of the 16th century, France claimed territory stretching as far south as...
  
  
• Golden Age
  Golden Age
  The term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology and legend and refers to the first in a sequence of four or five Ages of Man, in which the Golden Age is first, followed in sequence, by the Silver, Bronze, and Iron Ages, and then the present, a period of decline...
  
  
• Millennialism
  Millennialism
  Millennialism , or chiliasm in Greek, is a belief held by some Christian denominations that there will be a Golden Age or Paradise on Earth in which "Christ will reign" for 1000 years prior to the final judgment and future eternal state...
  
  
• Et in Arcadia ego (Guercino)
  Et in Arcadia ego (Guercino)
  Et in Arcadia ego is a painting by the Italian Baroque artist Giovanni Francesco Barbieri , from c. 1618-1622...
  
  , painting by Italian artist Giovanni Francesco Barbieri
  Giovanni Francesco Barbieri
  Giovanni Francesco Barbieri , best known as Guercino or Il Guercino, was an Italian Baroque painter from the region of Emilia, and active in Rome and Bologna. Guercino is Italian for 'squinter', a nickname that was given to him because he was cross-eyed...
  
  
• Utopia
  Utopia
  Utopia is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was imported from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt...
  
  
• Neverland
  Neverland
  Neverland is a fictional world featured in the works of J. M. Barrie and those based on them. It is the dwelling place of Peter Pan, Tinker Bell, the Lost Boys, and others...
  
  
• Pastoral
  Pastoral
  The adjective pastoral refers to the lifestyle of pastoralists, such as shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasturage. It also refers to a genre in literature, art or music that depicts such shepherd life in an...
  
  

External links

• Net in Arcadia Virtual Museum of Contemporary Classicism