Sardinia

In the division of provinces made by 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. 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 Ves pasian 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, 28o). 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. Carales was the only city with Roman civic rights in Sardinia in Pliny's time (when it received the privilege is unknown). 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.

Byzantine Period.

After the time of Constantine, the ad ministration 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 nomi nally until the loth century, when we find the chief magistrate still bearing the title of etpxo.n).

Saracens.

In the 8th century (72o) the period of Saracen in vasion began ; but the Saracens never secured a firm footing in the island. In 725 Liutprand 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 pro tection; but the Saracens were not entirely driven out, and about A.D. the Saracen chief Musat established himself in Cag liari. 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 who ever should drive out the Saracens. The Pisans took up the chal lenge, 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 roso, when the dominion of Pisa was established.

Pisan Period.

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 men tioned as existing in the account of the mission sent by Nicholas I.

in 864, as though the single authority of the Byzantine hpxwv was already weakened. The three Cipxovms who appear in loth century inscriptions bear alternately the names Torcotorius and Salusius; and, inasmuch as this is the case with the judices of Cag liari from the 11th to the 13th century, there seems no doubt that they were the successors of these Byzantine apxovres, 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. 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 remained a prisoner at Bologna until his death. After this the Pisan supremacy of the island seems to have become more of a reality, but Arborea remained independent, and after the defeat of the Pisans by the Genoese at the naval battle of Meloria in 1284 they were obliged to surrender Sassari and Logudoro to Genoa. In 1297 Boniface VIII. invested James II., the king of Aragon, with Sardinia; but it was not until 1323 that he attempted its conquest, nor until 1326 that the Pisans were finally driven out of Cagliari, which they had fortified in 1305-1307 by the construction of the Torre di S. Pancrazio and the Torre dell' Elefante, and which became the seat of the Ara gonese government. To the Pisan period belong a number of fine Romanesque churches, among which may be specially mentioned those of Ardara, S. Giusta near Oristano, La Trinita di Saccargia and Tratalias.