_a._ Arcadia. The Arcadian traditions enumerate a line of kings or hereditary princes, said to have ruled over the whole of Arcadia; the line commences with Arcas and his son Lycaon, whose successors kept possession of the supreme power, and shared more or less in the ancient feuds of the Hellenic princes. Upon the conquest of Peloponnesus by the Dorians, Arcadia was the only land that did not suffer by the irruption: an advantage for which it was probably indebted more to its mountains, than to the skill of Cypselus its king. The successors of that prince took a part in the wars between the Messenians and Spartans, siding with the former: but in the second Messenian war, the last Arcadian king, Aristocrates II. having betrayed his allies, was in consequence stoned to death by his subjects, and the regal dignity was abolished in 668. Arcadia now became divided into as many small states as it contained cities with their respective districts; among these Tegea and Mantinea were the chief, and probably held the others in a certain state of control, without, however, depriving them wholly of their independence. As might have been expected in a pastoral nation, the constitution was democratical. In Mantinea there were wardens of the people, ([Greek: demiourgoi],) and a senate, ([Greek: boule].) The wars of separate cities are frequently mentioned, but no general confederation united them. # See A. VON BREITENBAUCH, _History of Arcadia_, 1791.