Later literature in more than one language created a visionary Arcadia of uninterrupted pastoral charm and ease, a refuge for the weary, an earthly dream of “unlaborious life.” The fashion began in Greek itself in the artificial period of Alexandrian civilization when men were sated with city life and began to write chamber poetry about the beauties of nature. Arcadia, with its still unspoiled hills and woods and rivers, became a convenient setting for the delicate and charming fancies of litterateurs. But in the real Arcadia “nature” was a serious force to be reckoned with. The frowning mountains, wild ravines, and stretches of barren soil; the gusty storms of winter and the close heat of summer; the difficulties of communication between village and village, and the remoteness from the great highway of the sea, all combined to make Arcadian life rude and elemental. Often the inhabitants were forced to a hand to hand struggle with poverty. Sometimes they gave way, as Herodotus indicates when he says that “some men from Arcadia who were in need of a livelihood and wanted employment” deserted to the Persians. But oftener the Arcadians fought it out at home, tilling what soil they could, and patiently tending herds and flocks. Such a people, busy with the primitive needs of life, found in Pan and Artemis saviours and graciously intimate friends rather than fanciful presences with which to adorn pastoral poetry. Arcadia was, indeed, a very religious country, teeming both in its cities and on its lonelier hillsides with sanctuaries to many of the Olympian hierarchy, and especially to a strange, elusive divinity, known as the “Mistress.” But the divinities of life in the open most appealed to them. It is indicative of an important and not always recognized element in Greek character that some of the most lovely fancies of Greek mythology should have taken root where life was hard. The austerity of work and poverty was never denied by the clear-eyed Greeks. But instead of seeking, like the Celts, to escape from it into dreams of unreal and fairer worlds, they balanced against it the palpable beauty of this world and found much room for joy and laughter. Pan’s birth in Arcadia was third in an interesting series of events. The first was the birth of Zeus himself on Mount Lycæus, the isolated mountain peak which rises northwest of Megalopolis. It is, however, no widespread Hellenic tradition which gave to the king of the gods an Arcadian birthplace. Of all the places that claimed that honour, perhaps Crete most impressed herself upon the Greek world at large. But the legend of Arcadia at least resulted in bestowing upon the ruler of Olympus the well-known epithet “Lycæan,” and in establishing on the summit of the mountain a sanctuary involving sacrifices and festivals. Human sacrifices continued here astonishingly long, and the savagery of the early Arcadians left traces also in tales of werewolves roaming among the desert places of the mountain.