Augustus, Sardinia and Corsica fell to the share of the senate, but in A.D. 6, Augustus, owing to the frequent disturbances, took them over and placed them under a praefectus. Tiberius sent 4000 Jewish and Egyptian freedmen to the island to bring the brigands to submission (Tac. Ann. ii. 85). Later on two cohorts were quartered there and also detachments of the Classix Misenas, as the discharge certificates (tabulae honestae missionis) of the former and tombstones of the latter found in the island[1] show (C.I.L. x. 777). In A.D. 67 Nero restored Sardinia to the senate (but not Corsica) in exchange for Achaea, and the former was then governed by a legatus pro praetore; but Vespasian took it over again before A.D. 78, and placed it under an imperial procurator as praefectus. It returned to the senate, not before A.D. 83 but certainly before the reign of M. Aurelius, when we find it governed by a proconsul, as it was under Commodus; the latter, or perhaps Septimius Severus, took it over again and placed it under a procurator as praefectus once more (D. Vaglieri in Notizie degli scavi, 1897, 280).
A bronze tablet discovered in 1866 near the village of Esterzili is inscribed with a decree of the time of Otho with regard to the boundaries of three tribes, the Gallienses, Patulienses and Campani, who inhabited the eastern portion of the island. The former tribe had crossed the boundaries of the other two, and was ordered to withdraw immediately under pain of punishment (Corp. inscr. Lat. x. 7852). Carales was the only city with Roman civic rights in Sardinia in Pliny’s time (when it received the privilege is unknown) and by far the most important place in the island; a Roman colony had been founded at Turris Libisonis (Porto Torres) and others, later on, at Usellis and Cornus.
We hear little of the island under the Empire, except as a granary and as remarkable for its unhealthiness and the audacity of its brigands. It was not infrequently used as a place of exile.
A number of Roman towns are known to us. Besides those already mentioned, including the Phoenician cities (all of which continued to Towns exist in Roman days) the most important were Bosa (q.v.), and Forum Traiani (mod. Fordungianus) (q.v.), Neapolis and Othoca (mod. Oristano, q.v.). An interesting group of Roman houses was found in 1878 at Bacu Abis, 5 m. W. Towns and tribes. of Iglesias, but has been covered up again (F. Vivanet in Notizie degli scavi, 1878, 271). The name Barbaria for the mountainous district in the east centre of Sardinia, in the district of Nuoro, which still exists in the form Barbargia, goes back to the Roman period, the civitates Barbariae being mentioned in an inscription of the time of Tiberius (Corp. inscr. Lat. xiv. 2954). The Barbaricini are mentioned in the 6th century A.D. by Procopius, who wrongly derives the name from several thousand Moors and Numidians who were banished to the island by the Vandal kings, while Gregory the Great speaks of them in a letter (iv. 23) to Hospito, their chief, as a still pagan race, worshipping stocks and stones. The towns were connected by a considerable network of roads, with a total length of 958 Roman Roads.miles according to the Itineraries, the most important of which ran from Carales to Turris Libisonis (Porto Torres) through the centre of the island, passing Othoca (Oristano) and Forum Traiani. Its line is followed closely by the modern highroad and railway. A portion of its course, however, between Forum Traiani and the modern Abbasanta, is not so followed, and is still well preserved. Its width is as a rule about 24 ft.; at present its surface is formed of rough cobbling, upon which there was probably a gravel layer, now washed away. Several milestones belonging to it have been discovered, including one of the time of Augustus and one of Claudius near Forum Traiani, and one of Nero near Turris Libisonis, though it was probably not completed right through until a later period (T. Mommsen in Corp. inscr. Lat. x. 833; cf. Eph. epigr. viii. 181-183). A branch from this road ran to Olbia (followed closely by the modern highroad and railway also), and was perhaps the main line of communication, though the itineraries state that the road from Carales to Olbia ran through the centre of the island by Biora, Valentia, Sorabile (near Fonni) and Caput Thyrsi.
Many milestones belonging to the road from Carales to Olbia have been found, but all but one of them (which was seen at Valentia) belong to the portion of the road within 12 m. of the latter place, so that they might belong to either line (see Olbia). The distance seems to be identical by either route. The itineraries give it as 176 m.—the exact distance in English miles by the modern railway! The difference between English and Roman miles would be compensated for by the more devious course taken by the railway. Turris Libisonis was also connected with Othoca by a road along the west coast, passing through Tharros, Cornus and Bosa; this road went on to Tibula[2] (Capo della Testa) at the north extremity of the island and so by the coast to Olbia. From Tibula another road ran inland to join the road from Carales to Olbia some 16 m. west of the latter. Carales was also connected with Olbia by a road along the east coast. The south-west corner of the island was served by a direct road from Carales westward through Decimomannu (note the name Decimo, a survival, no doubt, of a Roman post-station ad decimum lapidem), where there is a fine Roman bridge over 100 yds. long of fourteen arches, still well preserved. The width of the roadway is only 11 ft. There is also a road through Nora and along the coast past Sulci to Metalla and Neapolis, and thence to Othoca.
After the time of Constantine, the administration of Sardinia was separated from that of Corsica, each island being governed by a praeses dependent on the vicarius urbis Romae. In 456 it was seized by Genseric. It was retaken for a short time by Marcellianus, but was not finally recovered until the fall of the Vandal kingdom in Africa in 534, by Cyril. In 551 it was taken by Totila, but reconquered after his death by Narses for the Byzantine Empire. Under Byzantium it remained nominally until the 10th century, when we find the chief magistrate still bearing the title of ἄρχων.[3]
In the 8th century[4] (720) the period of Saracen invasion began; but the Saracens never secured a firm footing in the island. In 725 Luidprand purchased and removed to Pavia the body of St Augustine of Hippo from Cagliari, whither it had been brought in the 6th century by the exiled bishop of Hippo. In 815 Sardinia submitted to Louis the Pious, begging for his protection;[5] Saracens. but the Saracens were not entirely driven out, and about A.D. 1000 the Saracen chief Musat established himself in Cagliari. Pope John XVIII. preached a crusade in 1004, promising to bestow the island (when or whether it had ever definitely passed into the power of the papacy is not absolutely clear) upon whoever should drive out the Saracens. The Pisans took up the challenge, and Musat was driven out of Cagliari with the help of the Genoese in 1022 for the third time. The Pisans and Genoese now disputed about the ownership of Sardinia, but the pope and the emperor decided in favour of Pisa. Musat returned to the island once more and made himself master of it, but was defeated and taken prisoner under the walls of Cagliari in 1050, when the dominion of Pisa, was established.
The island had (probably since the end of the 9th century) been divided into four districts—Cagliari, Arborea, Torres (or Logudoro), and Gallura—each under a giudice or judge, in whom the dignity became hereditary. Judices are already mentioned as existing in the account of the mission sent by Nicholas I. in 864 (Duchesne, Liber pontificalis, Pisan period. ii. 162), as though the single authority of the Byzantine ἄρχων was already weakened. The three ἄρχοντες who appear in the 10th-century inscriptions just mentioned bear alternately the names Torcotorius and Salusius; and, inasmuch as this is the case with the judices of Cagliari from the 11th to the 13th century, there seems no doubt that they were the successors of these Byzantine ἄρχοντες, who were perhaps the actual founders of the dynasty. These names, indeed, continue even after the Pisan family of Lacon-Massa had by marriage succeeded to the judicature. The Greek language occurs in their official seals down to the 13th century. Intermarriage (sometimes illicit) was apparently freely used by the dominant families for the concentration of their power. Thus We find that after the failure of Musat members of the family of Lacon-Unali filled all the four judicatures of the island (Taramelli, Arch. stor. Sard., cit. 105). In the continual struggles between Pisa and Genoa some of these princes took the side of the latter. In 1164 Barisone, giudice of Arborea, was given the title of king of the whole island by Frederick Barbarossa, but his supremacy was never effective. In 1241 Adelasia, heiress of Gallura and Logudoro, was married as her third husband to Enzio, the natural son of Frederick II., who received the title of king of Sardinia from his father, but fell into the hands of the Bolognese in 1249, and
- ↑ The discharge certificates of sailors from the Classis Misenas and Classis Ravennatis belonged to Sardinians who had returned home after service in those fleets.
- ↑ Excavations made in 1880 at Tibula and Sorabile resulted in the discovery at the former of a necropolis of the late Empire, in which the dead were buried in long amphorae, while at the latter Roman baths were explored (F. Vivanet in Notizie degli scavi, 1879, 350; 1881, 29 sqq.).
- ↑ Three inscriptions of the middle of this century, set up by the ἄρχων Σαρδηνίς with the title protospatarius, are illustrated by A. Taramelli in Notizie degli scavi (1906), 123 sqq.; cf. Archivio storico Sardo (1907), 92; and there are a few churches of the Byzantine period and style, a considerable number of Byzantine inscriptions, dedications to Greek saints, and other traces of the influence of the Eastern Empire in the island.
- ↑ Some authorities attribute to 774, others to 817, a donation of Sardinia to the papacy; we hear of Pope Nicholas I. sending legates in 865 to quell disturbances and check evil practices in the island.
- ↑ There is no authentic history for the intervening period; the famous “pergamene d’Arborea,” published by P. Martini in 1863 at Cagliari, have been shown to be modern forgeries.
