Arcadia

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An idealized place of simple pastoral beauty and contentment, or a region in ancient Greece known for its rustic charm and association with shepherds and idyllic rural life
2. a place or setting idealized as a peaceful rural paradise where simplicity and natural beauty create a harmonious existence away from urban complexity
3. an imagined rustic realm embodying perfect pastoral tranquility and innocent agrarian existence free from worldly corruption

Etymology: Arcadia is the name of a real region in the central Peloponnese of Greece, a mountainous, landlocked land with no coastline. The Greeks called it "Arkadia," and that name carried little glamour in antiquity; the Arcadians were regarded as rustic and remote, and the region's herdsmen and shepherds gave it its pastoral reputation. The wider world's idea of an idyllic countryside grew out of that rural image rather than out of any real prosperity. The name passed into Latin as "Arcadia," and Roman poets, above all Virgil in his "Eclogues," turned the region into a make-believe world of singing shepherds and contented herding. Later writers across Europe followed his lead, so that a place that existed on the map became a state of mind. The mental picture stuck far more firmly than any geography. Because the word refers to an imagined land rather than a real one, its meaning depends almost entirely on the literary tradition built around it. The name still points back to a mountainous corner of Greece, but in English it names a dream of simplicity.

Synonyms: paradise, utopia, heaven, bliss, idyll

Antonyms: hell, dystopia