Greek and Roman pastoral poems did what all pastoral poems do. A pastoral poem is about pastoral life; that is, the life of shepherds. The word pastoral is derived from pastor, the Latin for shepherd. These poems often romanticise rural life, especially that of shepherds, sometimes in an exaggerated, but representative way. Sometimes they idealise it in an unrealistic manner, presenting it as idyllic, the best lifestyle, as something like a Garden of Eden, especially compared with urban life. This type of poem started with the Greek poet Hesiod who introduced the idea of shepherds as a golden race of men in which human beings lived together with nature in harmony. Theocritus wrote pastorals in the dactylic hexameter which was associated with the most renowned type of Greek poetry, the epic