This paper aims to show that Sir Philip Sidney was influenced by both Polybius’s and Jacopo Sannazaro’s earlier accounts of the land of Arcadia when creating his own Arcadia. Linking the world of Philanax and Euarchus to Polybius’s Arcadia and the world at Basilius’s lodge to Sannazaro’s, the paper suggests that these two different “Arcadian” landscapes symbolize the opposing values of the two groups of characters. In the New Arcadia , but not the Old Arcadia , Sidney attempts to reconcile these different values into one balanced approach to life that is most obviously demonstrated by the new character of Kalander.

No abstract