) geographic location described by the Romans.
Mythological origins According to the legend recorded by Greek historians, the etymology of their name (Iolaes) is to be traced back to
Iolaus, the hero who led the
Thespiades, sons of
Heracles and the daughters of
Thespius (king of the
Boeotian city-state of
Thespiae) in Sardinia, where he founded a colony. Another myth tell that the old inhabitants of Ilium, better known as
Troy, after the fall of the city established themselves in this part of Sardinia (where they mixed with the Iolaes), hence the name of Ilienses.
Pomponius Mela considered the Ilienses as the oldest people of the island. . depicting a chieftain,
National Archaeological Museum, Cagliari Nuragic period Despite the myth, they were most likely a tribal group indigenous to the island. According to the archaeologist Giovanni Ugas, the Ilienses were the most important population of Nuragic Sardinia and were connected with the
Sherden, one of the
Sea Peoples widely cited in
Ancient Egyptian sources. This hypothesis has been, however, opposed by other archaeologists and historians.
Eduardo Blasco Ferrer correlates their name with the
Iberian root
*ili-, meaning settlement. In the nuragic period their territory extended from the plain of
Campidano (called in antiquity
Iolean plain) to the
Tirso river in north where began the territory of the
Balares. They were probably divided into 40 tribes, each ruled by a king or chieftain. These rulers lived in the complex
nuraghi, called "polilobates", such as
Su Nuraxi of
Barumini. In what was once their territory, very important are the findings of
Mycenaean artifacts, confirming the wealth of exchanges between these two ancient populations. Of particular interest are also the
Oxhide ingot, which perhaps came from
Cyprus and was discovered in various locations, including the
Cagliari area, in the
province of Ogliastra and other central areas. Between 1300 and 1200 BC in central-southern Sardinia was produced a kind of gray pottery also called "gray Sardinian"; remains of this type of pottery have been found in
Kommos, Crete, and at
Cannatello near
Agrigento,
Sicily.
Punic and Roman period As witnessed by the ancient sources (
Diodorus Siculus,
Bibliotheca historica and
Pausanias,
Description of Greece) since the sixth century BC this population opposed fiercely to the domination of
Carthage. After the end of the
First Punic War in 238 BC the Romans occupied the main strongholds of the Punic Sardinia, but the people of the interior opposed even to the new invaders. In 227 BC,
Corsica and Sardinia became the second
Roman province (the first was Sicily). The outbreak of the
Second Punic War and the victories of
Hannibal in the
Italian Peninsula provoked new stirrings of rebellion in Sardinia where, after the Roman defeat at the
Battle of Cannae, the Sardinian-Punic landowner and military
Hampsicora, helped by the Carthaginians and by Ilienses, organized a new uprising. In 215 BC the rebels were defeated and massacred in the battle of
Decimomannu by
Titus Manlius Torquatus and so
Carthage lost the island definitively. In Roman times the Ilienses and the Balares of the interior continued to resist, but in 177 BC they were heavily defeated by the consul
Tiberius Gracchus who killed or enslaved about 80,000 Sardinians. However still in imperial time they were not completely subjugated by
Rome and continued to live relatively independently in the central region called
Barbagia. ==Ilienses / Iolaes tribes (Iolei)==