Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 1.djvu/25

Inland Tribes. ters between the Phoenician settlers in possession of the seaboard and the outlying plain, and the pillaging mountaineers, doubtless frequently occurred at various points of the country ; nevertheless, by the very force of circumstances, some kind of friendly inter- course sprang up throughout the island between the barbarous natives and the more civilized colonists, all the more lasting that it rested on the common interests of both parties, and which seems to have continued down to the Roman conquest. Nor did it stop here ; the refining influences by which they were sur- rounded could not fail to work their salutary and beneficent effect, and to smooth away some of the most angular asperities of these savages. Thus when affrays had been unknown on the borders, and when neither slaves nor cattle had been missed for a while, the Highlanders, clad in goatskin-capes, as their wont is in the present day, descended to the seaports for the purpose of barter, bringing with them milch cheese, leather, and wool, which they exchanged for industrial products of the simplest and most elementary kind, such as implements, domestic utensils and apparel, which the rudest savage deems indispensable as soon as he has learnt their use. Under conditions such as these, aided too by the military ser- vice which Carthage imposed upon her colonies, it was natural that the condition of the aborigines should have improved, and that they themselves should have been placed on the lower grades of civilization. Nor is this merely conjectural ; Sardinians are stated to have been in the Carthaginian armies, fighting the battles in Spain, Italy, and notably Sicily, or formed the garrisons in their African fortresses. 1 Shut up within the thick walls of Carthage or Utica, the foreign soldier scarcely if ever mixed with city life. He was dissensions, when it was comparatively easy to repulse and compel them to fall back upon Italy. There followed a time of anarchy, during which the Romans interfered, called in too, perhaps, by Phoenician colonists, to re-establish order, and defend the threatened cities. 1 The Sardinians are among the people mentioned by Herodotus (vii. 165) as having supplied mercenaries to Carthage in the campaign which terminated with the battle of Himera, 480 ; whilst both Diodorus (XIV. xv. 1., 392 a.c.) and Strabo (V. ii. 7) refer to similar aid in the wars Carthage sustained against Rome. M. Pais, in an able article heading the first volume of the second series of the Bolletino Archcz. Sardo (1884), disposes of the opinion that the SapSonoi of Herodotus are the Sardones of southern Gaul, and he argues that if the Sardinians so rarely figure among Phoenician mercenaries, that is probably due to their being confounded with the Libyans.