436 Mele
player” of Monte Sirai (seventh-sixth centuries BC), are documented in both
the Punic and Roman ages.4 However, it is difficult to speculate on the music
of Sardinia in those times, marked as it was by a jumble of sounds, voices,
noises, choreutic gestures, and ritual contexts that existed in a perfectly orga-
nized social structure, which was in touch with the great cultural flows of the
Mediterranean area.
Thanks to Cicero and Horace, we have an account of the Roman period and
news of one of Caesar’s friends, the controversial Sardinian singer Tigellius,
and another musician of almost the same name, Marcus Tigellius Hermogenes,
who belonged to the circle of neóteroi—poets connected with Licinius Calvus
and Catullus.5 In 190 AD, Commodus’s concubine Marcia obtained the em-
peror’s permission for the eunuch Jacintus to allow the Christians sentenced
to hard labor in the imperial mines of Sardinia to return from their exile.6 It
is feasible that some of the deportees will have sung prayers or psalms that
they had learned in Sardinia. In the Acts of the Apostles (16:25), Paul, who was
imprisoned in Philippi together with Silas, sang the praises of God at night;
perhaps that example of faith was emulated by some Christians sentenced
ad metalla. Further evidence comes from archaeological research, which has
uncovered two marble sarcophagi from Ostia (found in Porto Torres) dating
from the third century AD and representing Apollo citharede with the muses
and Orpheus with the lyre.7 Another Orpheus with the lyre, dating from the
volume, see also “Priest, Musician and Dancer,” pp. 288–291, no. 113, figs. 113a-c; “Horn Player,”
from Genoni (Nu), pp. 375–377, no. 182, figs. 182a-b. On launeddas, see Weis Bentzon, The
Launeddas. A Sardinian Folk-Music Instrument, 2 vols (Copenhagen, 1969); Giovanni Dore,
Gli strumenti della musica popolare della Sardegna (Cagliari, 1976), pp. 37–66; Giulio Paulis,
“I Romani e le Launeddas,” in Launeddas: l’anima di un popolo, eds Giampaolo Lallai and Nico
Selis (Cagliari, 1997), pp. 222–229; and Giampaolo Mele, “Le launeddas e la miniatura della
carta 79v del manoscritto escorialense b.I.2 delle ‘Cantigas de Santa María’,” in Lallai and Selis,
Launeddas, pp. 231–249.
4 Paolo Bernardini, “L’aulete di Ittiri,” in Lallai and Selis, Launeddas, p. 208, fig. 3. A ritual con-
text, which implies music, is represented in the cippus tharrense which depicts three women
dancing around the phallus (fifth-third centuries BC).
5 Günther Wille, “Musica Romana,” in Die Bedeutung der Musik im Leben der Römer
(Amsterdam, 1967), pp. 145, 220, 329–331, 333–334; Attilio Mastino, ed. Storia della Sardegna
antica (Nuoro, 2005), pp. 114–116.
6 Raimondo Turtas, Storia della Chiesa in Sardegna dalle origini al Duemila (Rome, 1999), p. 33.
7 Attilio Mastino and Cinzia Vismara, Turris Libisonis (Sassari, 1994), p. 42. Giovanni Battista
Faedda, “Aspetti di iconografia musicale nelle fonti della Sardegna settentrionale,” Laurea
diss., University of Sassari, 2009–2010, p. 17.