The island of Sardinia lies just south of Corsica, off the western coast of the Italian peninsula.

In the year 227 BC, ie 526 years after the founding of Rome and 282 years after Rome ended its monarchy and became a Republic, the island became one of the first two overseas provinces for the Roman Republic (Sicily being the other). No ancient source usually providing details about Rome’s history provides us any details. but we have a Summary for Livy’s Book XX that would have covered this period that “The number of praetors (provincial governors) was enlarged to four” and it is assumed that the two new praetors were for Sicily and Sardinia.

Fourteen years earlier, Rome had finally won a victory over the North African city-state of Carthage after twenty-years of warfare, from 264 to 241 BC. The resulting peace treaty between the two cities made no mention of Sardinia. Polybius records that in 509 BC Carthage and Rome had signed a treaty, which apparently was renewed several times up until shortly before 264 BC. This treaty clearly stated that Sardinia was part of Carthaginian, not Roman, economic and political control.

Carthage’s armies had for centuries relied on mercenaries as well as native troops. Mercenaries came from Libya, Gaul, the Balearic islands, the Italian peninsula, and Sardinia itself. Mercenaries had to be paid, but Carthage’s treasury was seriously depleted and she began a delaying game to avoid payment.

This did not sit well with the mercenaries, as Polybius Book 1. 79 records in some detail.

Rebellion among the mercenaries took lasted about three years, from 241 to about 237 BC. Trouble broke out first in Libya, and spread to the Carthaginian garrison in Sardinia, particularly its mercenaries. These decided to kill their Carthaginian commander and officers, then attacked the Carthaginians in the towns and countryside surrounding the garrison. It was left to the indigenous Sardinians, according to Polybius, who drove the mercenaries out of the island and they sailed to the Italian peninsula.

The mercenaries sent pleas for aid to Rome, who at first declined but later decided it could not take the chance of allowing any non-Roman force to control the island and its waters. When Carthage sent word that it intended to take back its governance of Sardinia, Rome had enough, taking this as a new prelude to war–which Carthage was not prepared for, and so in 237 the peace treaty was amended with Sardinia becoming a province of Rome.

There is far more to this tale than in this brief record.

Two things stand out.

The first is that Polybius clearly refers to native, indigenous (ie not Carthaginian or other non-Sardinian) people who have enough strength and willpower to take action. Rome’s legions would face more of these indigenous during the next few years and decades. One has to wonder when Sardinia was first populated-how far back does its pre-Roman, pre-Carthaginian, human culture go?

More on this in later days.

The second item of interest is that Hannibal Barca (he who crossed the Alps and invaded Italy in the Second War between Carthage and Rome) took this “seizure of Sardinia by Rome” as a cause for his invasion. The Roman historian Livy, writing in the age of Emperor Augustus, believed this to be so because in his Book XXI. 43 he writes Hannibal speaking to his troops, saying “If it were only Sicily and Sardinia, wrested from our fathers, that we were going to recover by our valor, these would still be great enough rewards,” And again, “our hearts are kindled and pricked by rancor, wrongs and insults…Most inhuman and most arrogant of nations [[referring to Rome]] they reckon the world is theirs and subject to their pleasure…Is it not enough that you have taken away my ancient provinces of Sicily and Sardinia?”

So Sardinia and her people became a causus belli for Hannibal (along with the trouble Rome made over his expansion in Spain) to invade Italy and threaten Rome.

One of those “What Ifs?” What if Hannibal had been victorious and Sardinia reverted to Carthaginian control? How would that have played out?

Here Ends Day One.

Day Two: For decades Rome’s Legions fight to subdue indigenous rebellions.