[texhax] a question I can't find in the FAQs

[Northrup, Katherine]

Dear Sir or Madam:

   My name is Katherine Northrup and I am an undergraduate student at
Ursinus College (near Philadelphia, PA) writing in LaTeX for the first time.
I must say I'm very pleased with the appearance of my output and the ease of
writing in LaTeX, with the exception of one detail that I hope you can help
with.

  I'm writing a translation of an ancient astronomical text (Aristarchus of
Samos) and I'm trying to put a rounded over line over the groups of letters
that represent semicircles and arcs in the text.  I know about \overline for
the straight lines to denote line segments; I'd like to mark the arcs
accordingly.  My instructor found the \arc command 
\newcommand{\arc}[1]{\ensuremath{\stackrel{\displaystyle{\frown}}{#1}}} 
which invokes the frown and the stack function, but this really doesn't look
very good at all, especially over more than 2 characters (and I mostly need
it over 3).

  I'm hoping there is a simple way to do this; surely enough geometers write
in LaTeX that there might be.  I'd appreciate any advice at all about this
matter.  If you don't know of a way to do so, could you please put me into
contact with someone who might, or else suggest a search I might try on CTAN
that would show me documents that might contain such a symbol?

Thank you very much for your time and consideration of this matter.  I'm
very grateful.

Sincerely,

Katherine Northrup