Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, and one of the 20 regions of Italy. It is located west of the Italian Peninsula, north of Tunisia and immediately south of the French island of Corsica.
Olbia is a city and commune of 60,346 inhabitants in the Italian insular province of Sassari in northeastern Sardinia, Italy, in the historical region of Gallura. Called Olbia in the Roman age, Civita in the Middle Ages and the Terranova Pausania until the 1940s, Olbia has again been the official name of the city since the fascist period.
Archaeological evidence of prehistoric human settlement on the island of Sardinia is present in the form of nuraghes and other prehistoric monuments, which dot the land. The recorded history of Sardinia begins with its contacts with the various people who sought to dominate western Mediterranean trade in classical antiquity: Phoenicians, Punics and Romans. Initially under the political and economic alliance with the Phoenician cities, it was partly conquered by Carthage in the late 6th century BC and then entirely by Rome after the First Punic War. The island was included for centuries in the Roman province of Sardinia and Corsica, which would be incorporated into the diocese of Italia suburbicaria in 3rd and 4th centuries.
The Province of Sardinia and Corsica was an ancient Roman province including the islands of Sardinia and Corsica.
Tharros was an ancient city and former bishopric on the west coast of Sardinia, Italy.
The Punic religion, Carthaginian religion, or Western Phoenician religion in the western Mediterranean was a direct continuation of the Phoenician variety of the polytheistic ancient Canaanite religion. However, significant local differences developed over the centuries following the foundation of Carthage and other Punic communities elsewhere in North Africa, southern Spain, Sardinia, western Sicily, and Malta from the ninth century BC onward. After the conquest of these regions by the Roman Republic in the third and second centuries BC, Punic religious practices continued, surviving until the fourth century AD in some cases. As with most cultures of the ancient Mediterranean, Punic religion suffused their society and there was no stark distinction between religious and secular spheres. Sources on Punic religion are poor. There are no surviving literary sources and Punic religion is primarily reconstructed from inscriptions and archaeological evidence. An important sacred space in Punic religion appears to have been the large open air sanctuaries known as tophets in modern scholarship, in which urns containing the cremated bones of infants and animals were buried. There is a long-running scholarly debate about whether child sacrifice occurred at these locations, as suggested by Greco-Roman and biblical sources.
The Battle of Decimomannu or Caralis took place in Sardinia when a Carthaginian army sailed to the island to support a local revolt against Roman rule. The army, led by Hasdrubal the Bald, fought a similar size Roman army under the Praetor Titus Manlius Torquatus in the Fall of 215 BC somewhere between Sestu and Decimomannu, just north of Caralis. The Romans destroyed the Carthaginian army and then scattered their fleet in a sea battle south of Sardinia.
The Punic people, or western Phoenicians, were a Semitic people in the Western Mediterranean who migrated from Tyre, Phoenicia to North Africa during the Early Iron Age. In modern scholarship, the term Punic, the Latin equivalent of the Greek-derived term Phoenician, is exclusively used to refer to Phoenicians in the western Mediterranean, following the line of the Greek East and Latin West.
The Treaty of Lutatius was the agreement between Carthage and Rome of 241 BC, that ended the First Punic War after 23 years of conflict. Most of the fighting during the war took place on, or in the waters around, the island of Sicily and in 241 BC a Carthaginian fleet was defeated by a Roman fleet commanded by Gaius Lutatius Catulus while attempting to lift the blockade of its last, beleaguered, strongholds there. Accepting defeat, the Carthaginian Senate ordered their army commander on Sicily, Hamilcar Barca, to negotiate a peace treaty with the Romans, on whatever terms he could negotiate. Hamilcar refused, claiming the surrender was unnecessary, and the negotiation of the peace terms was left to Gisco, the commander of Lilybaeum, as the next most senior Carthaginian on the island. A draft treaty was rapidly agreed, but when it was referred to Rome for ratification it was rejected.
Carthage was a settlement in what is now known as modern Tunisia that later became a city-state and then an empire. Founded by the Phoenicians in the ninth century BC, Carthage reached its height in the fourth century BC as one of the largest metropolises in the world and the centre of the Carthaginian Empire, a major power in the ancient world that dominated the western Mediterranean. Following the Punic Wars, Carthage was destroyed by the Romans in 146 BC, who later rebuilt the city lavishly.
The Nuragic civilization, also known as the Nuragic culture, was a civilization or culture on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia, which lasted from the 18th century BC up to the Roman colonization in 238 BC. Others date the culture as lasting at least until the 2nd century AD and in some areas, namely the Barbagia, to the 6th century AD or possibly even to the 11th century AD.
Sardus, also Sid Addir and Sardus Pater was the eponymous mythological hero of the Nuragic Sardinians. Sardus appears in the writings of various classical authors, like Sallust, Solinus and Pausanias.
The Iglesiente is a traditional and geographical subdivision of Sardinia, Italy. It encompasses the northern province of Carbonia-Iglesias and the south-western one of the province of Medio Campidano, and its main center is Iglesias.
Sardinia is the second largest island in the Mediterranean Sea and an autonomous region of Italy. Tourism in Sardinia is one of the fastest growing sectors of the regional economy. The island attracts more than a million tourists from both Italy, from the rest of Europe, and, to a lesser degree, from the rest of the world. According to statistics, tourist arrivals in 2016 were 2.9 million people.
The Giants of Mont'e Prama are ancient stone sculptures created by the Nuragic civilization of Sardinia, Italy. Fragmented into numerous pieces, they were discovered in March 1974 on farmland near Mont'e Prama, in the comune of Cabras, province of Oristano, in central-western Sardinia. The statues are carved in local sandstone and their height varies between 2 and 2.5 meters.
Bithia or Bitia was a Phoenician, Carthaginian, and Roman town located near Chia in the extreme south of Sardinia, Italy. Most of the ruins have been submerged underwater.
Cornus was an ancient Punic-Roman town of Sardinia near Cuglieri and the location, during the revolt of Hampsicora, of a battle between a Sardinian army and the Roman Republic. The Carthaginians were also involved fighting against the Romans. The town is now unoccupied and is an archaeological site with a large well temple complex still visible.
Hampsicora was a Sardo-Punic political leader and landowner of Sardinia, and the leader of the major anti-Roman revolt in the province of 215 BC.
