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CHAPTER 3
Overview of Sardinian History (500–1500)
Laura GaloppiniIn ancient times, the island of Sardinia, geographically situated almost at the
center of the maritime routes of the western Mediterranean, entered into
contact with the Phoenicians, Etruscans, Greeks, and Carthaginians, gravi-
tating towards the political-economic realm of Carthage. Here, at the begin-
ning of the Bronze Age, the very ancient civilization of the Nuragics was born.
Occupied by the Romans (238 BC), it was the sixteenth provincia of the empire
together with Sicily and the regions of northern Africa, and one of the grana-
ries of Europe.1
1 The Vandals and Byzantines
Around 455 AD, Sardinia was conquered by Genseric, king of the Vandals, as
part of an attempt to control the Mediterranean through extortion, i.e. “grain
blackmail” against Rome.2 The Vandal king, converted to Christianity through
a disciple of the doctrine of Arius, adopted an unusual policy of religious
tolerance. According to some historians, this was motivated by disinterest in
the territory; according to others, it was due to the small number of Vandalic
people living in Sardinia relative to the number of Romans. By the end of the
fifth century, Victor Vitensis, an African bishop from Vita in the province of
Byzacena (Numidia), wrote that Genseric treated the island as a land to be ex-
ploited. More recently, it appears that the king adopted a strict policy to main-
tain peace and economic stability in Sardinia, a land geographically distant
1 Giovanni Lilliu, La civiltà dei Sardi dal Neolitico all’età dei Nuraghi (Torino, 1988); Piero Meloni,
La Sardegna romana, 2nd ed. (Sassari, 1980); Attilio Mastino, ed., Storia della Sardegna antica
(Nuoro, 2005).
2 Christian Courtois, Les Vandales et l’Afrique (Paris, 1955), pp. 187–190; Letizia Pani Ermini, “La
Sardegna nel periodo vandalico,” in Storia dei Sardi e della Sardegna, ed. Massimo Guidetti
(Milano, 1988–1990), vol. 1, pp. 297–327.